


Here We Are, You and Me, on the First Page

by anniedison



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, also there are two spiders who have a lot of spider sex, and it's very unfortunate, but i don't think they count as legitimate characters, okay well two characters are in med school so that should count?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:32:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniedison/pseuds/anniedison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So John Smith and his trusty feather duster own a hole-in-the wall bookstore. Except only two people ever bother entering - and they're both med students with major pining problems. Oh, and there's a pair of ginger temp workers with meddling issues, and to literally top it all off, the coffee shop on the second floor is infinitely more successful and likes rubbing it in everyone's face. To put it mildly, John isn't remotely fond of the flirty American barista and really wants to invest in a more soundproof ceiling. But things are okay - as in everybody's 'alive' and 'reasonably happy'.</p><p>And then Rose Tyler walks in and it all gets blown straight to hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Through the Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is literally a soap opera that went way over both of our heads. 
> 
> Co-written between doctorwhat and dawidtennant on tumblr, and I'm typing as the latter, seeing as doctorwhat doesn't have an AO3. But any comments here will obviously be forwarded to her~
> 
> Also we have no plan at all and we work as we go along, so if anybody has any requests for future plot developments, please let us know~

Rose Tyler wasn’t a coffee person, but then again, she wasn’t a morning person either - and the prospect of losing her job loomed more darkly over her head than that of drinking coffee. Just barely.

It wasn’t, of course, the most lucrative of jobs; working at Henrik’s was hardly what most little girls dreamed of. But it kept a steady enough flow of money coming in, so she kept herself fueled with caffeine for it.

And granted, a change of coffee was really the only way Rose could break the monotony of her life. Speaking of which, yesterday, Shareen had told her about a place not far from the store, Torchwood Coffee, directly above a little bookstore. So bracing herself for the bitter taste of an energy boost, Rose entered Tardis Books.

The door creaked ominously as she pushed, sounding unpleasantly like nails against a chalkboard. 

"John Smith, Tardis Books, how may I help you?" said someone standing atop a table to reach an uppermost shelf. He had two pairs of spectacles on top of his head, one hand reaching for a giant biography, and his nose buried in a book on particle physics. 

"I was just here for coffee. Upstairs, is it?"

"Damn," said the man. "That’s the only reason anyone comes in here anymore. Upstairs, yeah." He gave Rose Tyler a quick once-over. "Ah. And don’t let Harkness turn his charm on you; you’ll never come downstairs again."

Rose frowned a little. John was practically jumping around the pile of books he was sorting, like he couldn’t bear to keep his limbs stationary for even a fraction of a second. “Right, thanks.”

The stairs were, if possible, even creakier than the door; she wondered briefly if this Smith fellow had any regard for safety. Probably not - he looked like a bloke who would much rather spend an afternoon enraptured in a book than have any sort of building maintenance done.

There was no door at the top of the staircase, so the landing just opened up straight into a sparsely-populated little coffee shop. The barista sent a dazzling smile at her as she walked in. “Hello there,” he greeted her in a smooth American accent.

"Don’t start!" John’s voice echoed up from the first floor. 

”Ignore him; he’s just jealous.”

"Am not!" came the affronted voice from downstairs. 

"He cried like a baby when I accidentally spilled coffee over Great Expectations, so yeah, he’s totally not getting any," whispered the barista confidentially. 

"You know I can still hear every word you’re saying, Jack? Sound carries in here!"

The barista winked at Rose. “Jack Harkness,” he introduced himself, extending a hand. 

"Rose Tyler," she said with a grin, and took it. 

"So, what can I get you today?"

"Anything, really. Coffee’s not my poison of choice," confessed Rose, wrinkling her nose. 

Jack widened his eyes and looked positively scandalized. 

”You Brits and your tea superiority complex,” he grumbled.

Rose tried to look defensive, but in truth had to bite back a giggle. “Superiority complex!” 

“ _Yes,”_ he teased her, not breaking eye contact even as he pulled out a cup and started to pour some variation on coffee or another into it.

"Jack!" A woman with a straight crop of black hair glared at him from across the shop. "What did we say about customers? If you want to flirt with someone, go bother Ianto instead."

Another barista’s head popped out from around the corner. “I wouldn’t mind, sir.”

Jack winked at Rose and handed her the cup. “That’s two pounds.”

”If he winks any more, his eye’s going to fucking fall out,” said another man, his own eyes glued to his phone.

"Owen!" groaned the woman, who seemed to be some sort of manager. "Don’t you have work to do?"

"Actually, no," he said languidly, putting his feet up on the table across from him. "And I’m right, Gwen, you know I’m right."

Rose watched their banter with lively interest, finding them the most fascinating specimens of people she’d seen in weeks. 

"Fuck you, Owen," groaned the manager who seemed to be called Gwen. 

"Shut up!" cried John Smith from downstairs. "You’ll scare away all my nonexistent customers!"

"I think the way you stare at your feather duster is what really scares them away."

"I love my feather duster!" cried John, affrontedly. "Rose Tyler - that’s your name, right? Rose Tyler, don’t listen to him!"

”Wouldn’t dream of it,” she promised him, shaking her head. This had to be the strangest coffee shop in all of London - and she’d heard stories. “Thanks,” she added to Gwen. The long-suffering manager smiled at her.

Back downstairs, Rose came upon John inspecting his beloved duster, black spectacles now perched on his nose. “‘S a nice duster,” she offered, grinning.

He looked up at her surprisedly, as if he hadn’t heard the stairs creaking as she approached. “Isn’t it, though?” he cried, delighted.

“ _Not_ the duster again,” a woman typing away from behind the desk groaned. 

"That’s Donna Noble," John informed Rose with a sigh.

"Receptionist extraordinare," Donna put in.

”Apparently my best friend, too.”

"Which basically means that I’m the one who gets all his texts every night about how he’s got a hot date with a book on ring singularities at a bar while  _not_  getting laid.”

Rose stifled a giggle. 

"God," groaned John, "The world is against me."

"Look," said Rose, pulling her mobile out, "I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m going to be late for work. I probably already am…oh,  _shit_  - “

"We’re open til nine," offered Donna, looking as if she wanted to say something more, possibly, _"because John Smith thinks you’re really cute, so you should definitely come back."_  She managed to stop herself, instead kicking the bookstore’s owner under the table. 

He looked up, his ears very red. “Yeah. She’s right, we close at nine.”

Rose smiled and waved. “Maybe I’ll come back for tea. Maybe.”

"Ask her out, idiot," hissed Donna under her breath. "Go on."

"Rose? Rose Tyler, I - "

The door slammed shut.

"You didn’t even get her number!" berated Donna as John poked her with the wrong end of the feather duster. 

That would have been the end of it. That  _should_ have been the end of it. The morning of the 23rd would have been one when Rose Tyler had an especially peculiar experience in coffee-drinking and just that. 

But it had been a  _really good_ cup of coffee. And the company of one John Smith hadn’t exactly put a damper on her morning. So she did come back for tea, after all. 

(In complete and utter honesty, it had been an extremely easy decision on Rose’s part.)

Another redheaded woman raised an eyebrow at her as she walked into Tardis Books that afternoon. “So you’re the famous Rose Tyler.”

"Famous, am I?" Rose asked, leaning against the bookshelf where the woman was sorting biographies.

"For being one of three people who ever comes in this place anymore," the woman grinned. "I’m Amy, by the way, Amy Pond."

”Are you one of the three?”

"Oh god, no," laughed Amy with a shudder. "I like the place itself, but I prefer living adventure to reading it. Not that I get much adventure anyways shelving this lot, but I’ll take what I can get."

"So then who  _are_  the others?”

"Martha Jones and Rory Williams. Med students. Nice enough, but no clue how they can get any studying done with John and Jack screaming at each other."

Rose laughed. “Poor things.”

"God, I know. I think they both have a thing for John, honestly," Amy said with a raised eyebrow and a lowered voice. "No reason for them to be here otherwise. Rory is _such_  a piner; it’s getting me down.”

"They sound fascinating," said Rose honestly. "Are they here now?"

"Dunno," said Amy. "Let’s find out, shall we?" She then proceeded to scream Rory’s name so loudly the roof nearly caved in. 

Across the shop from them, at a table in the corner that had thick volumes piled precariously high on it, a man’s head darted up. “Hullo, Amy.” 

"Hi, Rory," Amy grinned.  _Always here,_ she mouthed to Rose, who had to suppress a smile of her own. “Where did John disappear to?”

"I think he popped upstairs to yell at Jack and Ianto for - what was it again? ‘Painfully audible snogging,’ I believe," Martha supplied.

"Sounds about right," Amy reasoned. Rose noticed that whenever Amy so much as opened her mouth, a highly conspicuous blush crept across Rory’s cheeks. The phenomenon hadn’t escaped Martha, either; she was smirking into her anatomy textbook. 

The room filled with the stairs’ creaking, and John’s distinctive figure approached. His eyes widened as he noticed the new presence in the room. “Rose Tyler!”

”John Smith!” she exclaimed in response, and immediately groaned because  _how pathetic was that?_

 _“_ It was painfully audible  _shagging_ , by the way, not snogging,” John said to Martha with narrowed eyes. “Why didn’t you stop me from going up?”

"How was I to know?" asked Martha indignantly, with a not-particularly-discreet wink at Amy. 

"If you came here for tea, Rose Tyler, I suggest you don’t go up. I have books about tea, though!" John said, turning his attention away from his hysterically giggling friends.

"I…I think I’ll pass."

"The books are nearly as good! We might even have a scratch-and-sniff thing somewhere, wait a mo’, I can check - "

"So you’re the one and only Rose Tyler?" inquired Martha Jones. "He wouldn't shut up about you for the past hour!" 

Compared to a vast majority of the people Rose knew, Martha was making an admirable attempt to be friendly under the circumstances, and honestly at this point, she was certain that Martha would be a better match for the strange stick-insect of a bookshop owner than Rose herself.

"No scratch-and-sniff book," said John, coming back despondently. "I  _did_  walk in on Owen and Tosh in the back room, though. Since when was  _that_  a thing?”

”Since he scratched-and-sniffed  _her,”_ Amy replied. John looked on disapprovingly as the rest of them dissolved into laughter. 

The door swung open, and Gwen walked in. Nodding to them, she headed towards to the stairs, but John stopped her. “I would  _not_ do that if I were you.”

"Oh, God." Gwen ran a nervous hand through her hair. "I leave for  _five minutes_ to get a cup of coffee -“

"Hold on!" Martha raised a hand. "You work in a coffee shop."

"I wanted innuendo-less coffee for once in my life," Gwen sighed. She turned to Rose. "Oh, you’re back! We’ve been hearing John go on about you ever since you left."

“‘Cause it’s - it’s so rare that anyone comes in here,” Rory provided as John scratched his ear uncomfortably. 

Rose stared at John awkwardly running a hand through his hair. “I don’t mind,” she said slowly. “Not like I have anywhere better to be.”

John beamed.

"I mean, I have work, but that’s not better. It’s a place. That I have to be. But it’s not a  _better_  place. Oh, fuck it, that made  _no_  sense at all,” Rose stumbled uncharacteristically loudly.

John’s smile dissolved into an expression of utmost relief, probably at the fact that he wasn’t the only one tripping over his own tongue.

”Hey, it’s the tea snob!” called Jack, sliding down the banister and nearly breaking it. His hair was standing up on end in classic I’ve-just-been-shagged-and-I-don’t-give-a-shit style, for obvious reasons. “Ianto, get your clothes on, it’s John’s girlfriend!” he yelled back up the stairs. 

"That’s it, you’re fired," said John Smith with eyes that could kill, incinerate, mutilate, or otherwise maim. 

"You don’t have the authority," teased Jack, with the air of someone who’d had this debate at least twenty times before. 

"Oi, don’t look at me," cried Gwen to John. "I would, but he makes really good coffee!" 

"And he’s a  _fabulous_  kisser,” added Ianto, rushing down the stairs two at a time, his buttons drastically out of alignment. “Ianto Jones, office boy - basically I just do things - and people- around the place,” he introduced himself, extending a hand to Rose. “I don’t think we’ve met properly.” He turned to John with a quick, “And if you fire Jack, I go too.”

John Smith threw the feather duster at Ianto, smirking as it hit him straight in the nose. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So feel free to leave any comments either here or on tumblr! If any people from tumblr actually found their way here, you can obviously give your opinion and/or say hi~


	2. Much Ado About Nothing

”Good day?” Jackie Tyler asked as she set dinner from the chippy across the street down on the table. Her daughter had been smiling an unnatural amount ever since she got home; Jackie was rather relieved that, after her nasty split from Jimmy Stone, Rose had finally learned to use her facial muscles in order to form an expression other than a scowl. 

"Yeah, I guess," Rose shrugged. "I found this -" A knock came on the door.

"There’s Mickey." Jackie got up to let their neighbor in, interrupting Rose. 

"Hey, Mick," Rose greeted him.

"Rosie," he shot back. She glared at him, but couldn’t manage to hold the premise of anger once the image of none other than John Smith snuck in her mind. 

"Why’re you so happy?"

"Why shouldn’t I be?!"

“‘Cos you like to go emo on us.”

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes. "I just… there’s this coffee shop I stopped in today, and, I dunno, it put me in a good mood. You should go with me tomorrow after work! The people there are…  _interesting,_ but they’re nice.”

"Don’t you hate coffee? You call it demon blood,” scoffed Mickey suspiciously. 

"I hate  _you_ ,” she retorted, then ran up the stairs debating the merits of blue nail polish versus pink for tomorrow morning, and then buried her face into her pillow and didn’t bother to paint her nails at all. 

When Rose dashed into Tardis books the next morning, John Smith was standing on a stepstool replacing a book on the top shelf. He had that godawful feather duster tucked behind his ear, and looked spectacularly stunning on his tiptoes with his back to her. 

"Morning!" she said cheerily in an attempt to initiate conversation rather than ogle John’s backside. 

"Rose Tyler!" he exclaimed while overbalancing, and then promptly fell off the stool. 

" _Me-_ ta- _phor_ ," singsonged Martha and Rory simultaneously while walking into the front door, and exchanged a high-five. 

"Oi, tea-snob!" Ianto called from upstairs. "You want coffee?"

"Actually," Rose said to John, whose limbs were still tangled in a knot on the floor, "I was thinking about getting a book before work."

"Oh! What sort do you read?"

"I…I actually  _don’t_. I wanted to bring a…friend here during tea, and I want him to think I’m cultured, you know?”

John Smith’s face fell slightly at the ‘him’. “ _Oh_ ,” he said again. 

Donna raised her eyebrows at the med students with a slight frown. They did  _not_ need a mopey John on their hands; when he started brooding, there was absolutely no stopping him.

"Well," John considered, running his hands over a row of books, "if ‘cultured’ is what you’re going for, Jane Austen’s good, ‘specially if you’re a sucker for a good love story."

Realizing that she had been focusing more on John’s well-formed lips than the actual words coming out of them as he spoke, Rose nodded quickly and took the book he was offering -  _Persuasion_ \- out of his hands, pretending to have been paying attention.

"So, that’ll be it?" John asked shortly. He had no plausible reason to be mad at her - he  _wasn’t_ mad at her. He was just… in a bad mood for other reasons that he was sure he could think up once Rose left and Donna, Martha, and Rory inevitably started teasing him. 

"Yeah," Rose answered, opening up her purse. She was distracted, though, by Jack, who had come down the stairs holding a cup of coffee, which he promptly handed to her.

"What’s this for, then?" 

"Gwen says it’s an apology for having to put up with us two days in a row," he recited with a smirk. 

"Very much appreciated." Rose took a sip and considered it. "Tasting less and less like demon blood."

"What?" asked John abruptly. 

"Absolutely nothing."

Jack turned to Martha and Rory. “How do you two manage to get anything done around here?”

”You’re white noise,” replied Martha to Jack with a grin. 

“ _I_  don’t get anything done,” said Rory. “You guys suck. That’s why I usually come back in the afternoon. Emptier.”

Martha coughed into her hand, and the cough sounded oddly like the name of a certain redhead parttime worker. 

"Empti- _er_ ,” scoffed John, ignoring her. “That’s rich. When are we not empty?”

"Hey, I’m doing my part," butted in Rose. "Advertising and all."

John and Donna exchanged glances; he was unfortunately aware that he’d rather go out of business than accept Rose’s ‘advertising’, and he was even more unfortunately aware that Donna knew exactly what he was thinking. 

"And a grand total of one more customer. Oh joy," deadpanned Owen from a beanbag chair. 

"Stop the whole cynical asshole persona or I’ll fire you," yelled Gwen from upstairs.

"Do you only have one threat?"

"Yes!"

"I say get rid of him," Tosh added, looking up from her computer. "Being snarky and lazy are the only things in his job description."

"Lover's tiff, hm?" said Jack quietly, and Martha, Rory, and Donna all swiveled to stare at a still-blushing John Smith. 

"Parallel structure," mused Martha and Rory at the same time, and high-fived again. 

”Nerds,” Owen muttered darkly. Tosh shot him a reproving look and he pouted, embarrassed.

Rose flipped open her mobile and grimaced. “Ah, I should probably be going.”

John looked dazed for a moment as if he had only been paying attention to her rather soft-looking hair as she spoke - which, of course, he  _hadn’t_. “Right,” he replied quickly, handing her the book and putting her notes in the cash register. 

"But I’ll come round for tea," she promised as the bell jangled on her way out.

All eyes turned to John, shoving books haphazardly onto the counter to be shelved. “What?” he asked as soon as he looked up.

"You’ll be excited for tea, then, won’t you? Meeting Rose’s  _friend?_ " Jack asked, eyebrows waggling suggestively.

John picked up the feather duster and jabbed it in Jack’s chest. “I decidedly do  _not_ fancy Rose Tyler.”

”Yeah, and Jack’s never seen Ianto naked,” quipped Rory.

"Oi - "

"Sorry, John," apologized Martha, not sorry in the least. "We’re out. We’ve got class - anatomy test."

"Bones of the hand?"

"Got those down, thank you very much," Martha said, as Rory added, "And the bones of everything else too, really." She grabbing Rory’s hand and ran out the door.

John gave them a wave and then glanced around the shop with distasteful despair. “It’s a mess here.”

"And off he goes with his duster," Donna said with rolled eyes to nobody in particular.

"No, but seriously, the dust’s the least of it. Her friend’s going to call the authorities on us or something - those books could fall on someone’s head and kill someone - "

"Ooh," butt in Owen, "Now that’s a thought."

John entertained himself with the possibility of Rose’s perhaps-boyfriend going gloriously extinct for three brief seconds before Donna interrupted with a sensible, “Shush, boys, you don’t even know him.”

"But still…" sighed John dreamily.

Donna smacked him on the arm in a fashion that wasn’t entirely friendly. “ _You_ will be polite to Rose’s friend because he’s a possible customer and  _I_ want to go to Spain, which  _I_ need a better Christmas bonus for.”

"He probably doesn’t even read," John commented off-handedly, picturing an uneducated Neanderthal of a man.

"Neither does she," Jack pointed out with a cocked eyebrow.

"Yeah, but she’s…" John began to say as he stroked his other copy of  _Persuasion_ lovingly. 

"Do you two need a moment?" Owen smirked.

John tossed a rag at him. “If you’re going to be down here, at least make yourself useful.”

Owen shot him the foulest of death glares but rose from the beanbag nonetheless.

"Are you poaching employees from me, Smith?" Gwen called down.

"Barely an employee, Cooper!"

He was met with a resentful “Fair enough.”

”Can I squish the copulating spiders on the science shelf?” asked Owen a few minutes later.

"No!" shrieked John. "I  _named_  them!”

"That is  _terrifying_ , which means something coming from me,” Jack’s voice came from upstairs. 

Ianto responded with an “Oh god, yes, drown them in coffee,” just as Donna yelled, “Shut the fuck up and leave them be!”

"Thank you," sighed John to his receptionist in relief. 

"They have got a point, y’know," added Gwen. "I think any girl would prefer a Neanderthal to a spider aficionado, just saying."

"Well - " started Tosh. 

"Come on," said John, "you’ve already  _got_  a Neanderthal. Never used a duster in his life, I swear to god.”

"Oi, I think I’ve got the shelf pretty clean!" retorted Owen, before succumbing to an embarrassingly high-pitched sneezing fit. 

Tosh buried her face in her hands, pained at the sight… and sound. 

"Was that the dying spiders?" Ianto asked, his smug expression evident even to those who couldn’t see it. 

"Oi!" John cried defensively to no one in particular. He curled a protective brown-suited arm around where the spiders had made their home. "These are  _my_ arachnids, thank you very much.”

"Spiders or the duster, which one d’you think he loves more?" Jack mused.

"Least he has a chance with the duster; spiders’re already happy," Owen pointed out. 

"Just like Rose," Gwen put in.

"Why did I hire any of you?" John groaned, taking a weary seat from which he could admire his spiders. 

”You didn’t,” pointed out Jack. “ _We_  own the top floor.”

"I’m going to hire a demolition crew first thing; top floors are overrated."

"John!" called Owen in evident alarm. "The spiders moved - I lost them - fuck, we’re screwed -  _oh_ , never mind? I think they’re having spider-sex on Hitchhiker’s Guide?”

John blanched. “But…but they can’t!” he spluttered. “That’s  _sacred_!”

"Can I - "

"No, Ianto, you can’t drown them! Not now, not ever!"

"But - "

"Jack, distract him - oh, god, not like  _that_!”

The door opened with a bang and a cry of, “I come in early, and get  _this_?”

"Amy, thank goodness!" groaned Tosh.

"Right - so I’ve got to deal with one nauseatingly public couple?" She looked at Jack and Ianto while heaving a sigh. "Not in the job description, but - "

"No,  _two_ ,” said Donna, gesturing to the general direction of the spiders. 

Amy peered over Owen’s shoulder and nearly shrieked. “ _Definitely_  not in the job description.”

”With that,” Donna said with an entirely self-satisfied look, “I’m out of here. Good luck, Pond.” 

John threw his hands up. “You were working for all of two hours!”

"And they were a very taxing two hours," she grinned. "But now mini-me’s here to take over."

"Someone should tell Rory," Owen piped up.

Amy spun around to face him. ”What?”

"Nothing!"

"So, what’d I miss around this place?"

"Rose’s bringing in her boyfriend later," Ianto called down. 

"Really?!"

"Not," John corrected, aggressively dusting a sidetable, "her boyfriend. Just a  _friend_ who happens to be  _male._ ”

"Awww!" Amy ruffled his hair. "Are you properly jealous right now?"

He squirmed out from under her. “‘Course not. Now if you don’t  _mind,_ I’m about to go save Douglas Adams’ treasured work from being desecrated any further by Beatrice and Benedick.”

"That’s what you named the spiders?" Jack asked incredulously. 

”I see no problem with that,” said John with a frigid air. 

"Only you would," commented Donna breezily on her way out the door. 

"Better than ‘Rose Tyler’ and ‘John' - ow!" Owen was cut off after Amy swatted him on the head with the copy of _Persuasion_  that she grabbed from John’s hand. 

"Don’t desecrate it with his hair follicles - don’t." John warned with a menacing glare. 

"There is nothing wrong with my - "

"Okay, okay, shut up!" Amy yelled in an angry attempt to diffuse the tension. "For all of our sakes, this friend, whoever he is, needs to think we have a fully-functioning business that’s breaking even."

"Breaking…even…" repeated John, as Gwen could be heard succumbing to a giggling fit from upstairs. 

"Yeah,  _we’re_  breaking even,” she called down to him. “Not so sure about you guys, but - “

"Uncalled for, Cooper!"

"Sorry, not sorry."

John groaned. “Well, Amy, what would  _you_  suggest?” 

"Take that goddamn feather duster and  _do something_  with it instead of staring at it like you want to make out with it in a corner.”

"Which I  _was_  doing before you came in - “

"Oh _really_ now. And I’ll call Rory and tell him to pay some people to come in here and pretend there’s nowhere else they’d rather be. Bribery always works wonders."

"Oi, Amy, he’s in the middle of an exam!"

She stared at her phone for an instant. “Screw that; he’s probably got over a hundred in the class anyway,” she said before pressing  _dial_. 

They watched as Amy tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for Rory to pick up. “There’s my favorite med student!” she crowed into her mobile after a few moments. “So, Rory, what’re you up to this afternoon?”

The rest of the employees winced. She was giving the poor boy false hope. 

"Mmhmm, mmhmm, good," she continued, "and how do you feel about a little bribery?" A pause. "Because John wants to impress a girl, of course. Yes, Rose! How many girls d’you reckon he even knows?" This was followed by a comment on Rory’s part that made Amy laugh so hard she could barely breathe.

Needless to say, John was  _not_ happy. 

She explained the plan to him, and he obviously agreed (as if there were any chance that Rory might deny Amy; they all knew what result to expect). “Deceiving Rose’s boyfriend it is,” she announced, hanging up the phone. 

Everyone cheered. Mostly everyone, anyway.

"Foolproof, hm?" asked Owen sarcastically. "Doubt it."

"Oh, christ,” Amy blurted. “Yeah, I don’t even know how much money Rory has -  _so_  impractical, he is - I’m going after him - ” she muttered while leaving the shop through the front window. ( _What_? Doors were so overrated.)

"What do we do now?" asked Owen, flinging the dustcloth across the room and collapsing back into the beanbag chair. "Waiting? Because I can do waiting."

"You make the best goddamn cup of coffee you’ve ever made in your entire pathetic excuse for a life," ordered John viciously. "Now go on, shoo."

Tosh picked up Owen’s rag where it lay. “You want me to help with the cleaning part of things?”

"Nah, I’ll be fine with this," John said, tossing his feather duster in the air and catching it expertly. "You just take Donna’s desk and pretend to be dealing with some nonexistent accounts."

"But - "

"Toshiko,  _please_.” 

"That’s useless - "

"I’d let you balance the actual books, but I do  _not_  want you to see how badly in debt we are.”

"Fine," she acquiesced with a sigh, and ended up perched on the table watching the cleaning effort descend into a messy water fight with spray bottles, which is apparently what happened when you asked Jack and Ianto to help with anything. 

Honestly, John should’ve known better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, so that's that, and do the comment-y thing? Comments are cool. 
> 
> We're posting chapters 1-6 in one day so I don't want to keep repeating the same notes because it's terribly awkward. 
> 
> So I'll just pop back up again after chapter 6~


	3. Sense and Sensibility

Rose led Mickey through the front door of Tardis Books that afternoon, looking around with a slight frown. “‘S… weird.”

"What?"

"There are  _people_ everywhere.”

His brow furrowed. “There weren’t before?”

"Well, yeah, but they all work here; weren’t proper customers. Huh." She sent a covert glance over to John’s desk, but he was occupied talking to a short brunette woman. Rose found herself rather miffed at the idea that he might actually have  _business._

Mickey waved a hand in front of her face. “D’you want to go get some tea?” 

Right, that’s what they were there for. 

"Yeah, yeah, sure," she agreed, snapping out of her John-induced daze. "Just up these stairs…"

They were greeted at the top by Jack, who was hanging out lazily at a free table with his legs propped up while Ianto served all the coffee. “Tea snob!” he cried upon seeing Rose. He did a quick once-over of her companion. “And who is  _this?”_

”Mickey,” introduced Rose. “Mickey Smith.”

"Oh, Rose, let  _him_  talk,” said Jack. 

"Yeah…what she said," Mickey responded awkwardly. 

While Ianto slid Mickey a cup of coffee across the counter (which he just barely caught), Rose bumped into Amy at the top of the stairs, proudly surveying her handiwork from above like some utterly mad goddess. 

"The hell happened here?"

"Amy Pond happened, Rose. Get used to it."

"No, but  _the people_.”

"Rory offered to tutor some people no charge if they showed up here, and they brought their friends, and the food’s free too. Sweetheart, he is."

Rose winced.

"So. Is your boyfriend suitably impressed?"

"He’s  _not_  my boyfriend, and honestly, I don’t know. I told him it was a hole-in-the-wall, and now it’s  _this_!” 

Amy shrugged. “It’s nice, though.”

"I liked the quirkiness - the emptiness - " Rose started, trying not to make it obvious that she despised the crowd for purely selfish reasons.

”You liked having John’s undivided attention,” Amy replied pointedly.

_Damn._

"That’s not…" Rose spluttered, " _entirely_ accurate.”

"Excuse me," an voice came from behind Amy. She moved to the side, revealing the petite girl John had been talking to downstairs. 

Rose clenched her jaw a little. The girl was rather adorable, what with her  _cute_ retro dress and her  _cute_ bouncy hair and her  _cute_ little apologetic smile. She was probably shagging John already.

Well, that was probably unfair.

But still.

"Blimey," the girl said breathlessly, having had to push through a large group of students on the staircase. "I live across the street from this place, and I’d never seen anyone come in. Thought it was abandoned before today; it’s a wonder they’ve stayed in business."

"I work here," Amy informed her.

"Oh!" An embarrassed blush crept on the girl’s face. 

Amy burst out laughing. “I’m sorry; I had to. Really, you’re right; we have two customers. Or three, if Rose decides to keep showing her face ‘round here.” She turned to the blonde. “Speaking of which, have you gotten a chance to read that book yet?”

"I bought it this morning!"

"Yeah, but John’s going to be peppering you with questions the second he sees you. Best be prepared."

”Crap, can you get Tosh to pull up an internet summary for me?”

"On it," said Amy instantly with a mock salute, dashing down the stairs. 

"So," began the brunette, "I’m Clara Oswald. You?" Clara eyed her with interest, probably jealousy, Rose thought. 

"Rose Tyler. And I’m just here for the coffee. ‘M probably going to go soon; I think Jack’s intimidating my friend to pieces. I guess I’ll just say hi to John and then get out," she responded, trying to extricate herself from the situation as painlessly as possible. 

"John seems nice, doesn’t he?" asked Clara. 

 _Well, shit, that’s just great._  “Yeah,” said Rose reluctantly. “I guess…”

"D’you like him?" The glint in Clara’s eyes was perceptive. "Or as my students say, do you  _like_  like him?”

Rose opened and closed her mouth like a fish.

"I’m a teacher," Clara explained. "Just started. But do you?"

"Oh," said Rose, conscious that her face was on fire. "No. Oh, god, no. I mean, look at him! Like a grasshopper or something, right?"

"Good," said Clara, pleased. "Hold out your hand for a sec?"

Rose did so, as Clara fished out a purple pen from her dress pocket and scrawled something on her palm. “My number. Call me?” Then she winked and disappeared down the stairs. 

Rose gaped at her hand. That was… she couldn’t…  _what had just happened?_ Her hand tingled in a not at all uncomfortable way from where Clara’s fingertips had brushed it as she wrote the number.

She’d never been  _involved_ with a girl before. 'Course, Jimmy Stone hadn’t exactly proved a worthy advocate for her heterosexuality, and Clara had been  _really, really_ cute. Plus, Rose definitely didn’t fancy John Smith. 

At all.

Perhaps it was worth a try?

She swallowed as Amy ran back up. “Tosh has SparkNotes pulled up,” the Scot announced. “Wait - what happened to you? You look like you just stumbled upon Jack’s nudes.”

"I got asked out," Rose replied numbly.

"Is it really that rare? You’re worse than John, and that’s saying something."

"But it… never mind. Let’s go find Tosh." The women bounded down the stairs together, pushing through the throngs of customers. Before they could make it to the computer, though, they were stopped.

"Rose Tyler!" John Smith called out, his voice lilting happily.

Rose stopped in her tracks, running through known facts in her head. 

A) Clara Oswald was cute. 

B) John Smith was most certainly not cute. Not at all. Not the way his reading glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose, not his stupid hair, not his rumpled suit. 

C) The book he was going to ask her about was entitled  _Persuasion_. 

D) Written by Jane Austen.

E) It had characters in it. 

F) And the characters probably did things. Maybe. 

"Amy?" she whispered."I’m kind of screwed."

"Fuck it," the ginger muttered back roughly. "Go find Tosh, I’ll cover for you."

Rose nodded hopefully pleasantly at John and bolted. 

"What…what’s up with her?" John asked Amy, quite lost.

"Oh, she got asked out. You jealous, Mr. Smith?"

"No!" exclaimed John indignantly. "Wait, this means her friend isn’t her boyfriend?"

"Apparently not."

"So the deception was all for nothing? I am socializing with people for  _nothing_?”

"Apparently."

"Amelia Pond, I _hate_ you." 

"You sound like Rory when he’s in a bad mood, except he’s still nice," mused Amy. 

John, like _everyone_ whenever Amy mentioned Rory, winced. 

”Can we tell all of them to go home now?” he whined. “Except Rose, of course. I want Rose to stay. Do you know who asked Rose out?  _I_ should have asked Rose out.”

"You  _really_ like saying her name, don’t you?”

"It’s a good name! Rose Tyler."

Amy rolled her eyes. “You are  _so_ far gone.”

"Am not!"

"Are too!" Jack’s, Gwen’s, and Ianto’s voices came from upstairs.

John rocked forward so that he was standing on the tips of his Converse. “Do you at least know if she liked the book?”

“ _John._ " Amy put a firm hand on his arm. "You gave it to her nine hours ago."

"Exactly! She’s had nine whole hours."

"She’s been at  _work._ ”

"I read at work all the time!"

"You run a bookstore."

He made a face at her. “Still!”

”You can’t hold her up to standards that high, John,” advised Amy wisely. “She’s only human.”

Rory seemingly materialized behind Amy’s shoulder. “Nah, I get it, if you really love someone, they can do no wrong, you know? And even their wrongs are right.”

Amy responded to this poetic spiel with a terse, “Ugh, boys are so stupid!” 

The remainder of the group turned pained faces to Rory and lapsed into a very awkward silence. 

Martha thankfully rushed up to drag Rory away - she seemed to be doing a lot of dragging lately. “Oi, there’s this bloke called Tom, and you’re my wingman now.” She pointedly smiled at John, who for the life of him could not imagine why Martha would single him out like that. 

Meanwhile, Rose was crouched under Donna’s desk with Tosh’s laptop, reading the SparkNotes summary of _Persuasion_. “Toshiko, this is bullshit,” she groaned after three minutes. “How can he  _stand_  this crap?”

"You’re talking about the guy who named a horny pair of spiders after Shakespearean characters - I hope you realize that."

“ _Christ_ ,” laughed Rose, giggling so hard she knocked her head on the top of the desk, which somehow made her laugh even harder. “What did I miss this morning? Do I even want to know?”

Tosh widened her eyes and shook her head fervently in the universally-recognized gesture for “hell, no.”

Rose laughed more. “That’s what I thought.” She sucked in her breath. “‘Marriage is a social yardstick?’” she read, baffled, from the website. “Do sane people even  _talk_ like that?”

"Writers are never sane," put in Tosh sagely. "It’s what makes them so good at what they do."

"Right." Rose nodded, absorbing this. "Is John a writer, by any chance?" Tosh nodded, a grim expression on her face. "Dunno why I’m surprised…"

She turned back to the computer screen and actually tried to make sense of the foreign words, staring at them for long moments and hoping for her brain to make some sort of connections between them. That is, until she was interrupted.

"Hello," Clara Oswald said brightly, crouching by her. 

Rose nearly screamed and hit her head on the desk again, but she had better self-restraint than that; she  _just_ hit her head on the desk. For the second time in three minutes.

She could almost feel Tosh’s pity.

"Sorry," Rose said, trying to smooth down her hair and make it seem like nothing had just happened, "what are you doing here?"

"Well," Clara thought, "usually when someone’s crouching under a desk, there’s a good reason."

”John Smith,” explained Tosh, as Rose was stuttering something about how “hiding under desks was totally normal, excuse  _you_.”

"Ah," said Clara. 

"He wants to discuss Jane Austen with me, so I’m pretending to read the book. The usual."

"Just like my kids!" exclaimed Clara. "I mean, it’s always obvious to me when they’ve used the internet instead of actually doing their homework, but I don’t know how perceptive Mr. Smith  _is_  - “

"He’s not," said Jack from behind them; all three women screamed this time as they nearly got concussions. 

"Out," warned Tosh, rubbing her temples. 

"Girls’ night out? Or should I say  _girls’ night under_?” He didn’t get to say any more than that before Tosh kicked him in the back of the knee and he stumbled and fell over in a groaning heap three feet away. “Fine, fine,” he moaned in affected pain. 

"Don’t scream," said Amy quietly a few seconds later from where Jack was previously standing. Not that they obeyed - it  _was_  hellishly creepy hearing disembodied voices. “Coast is clear, Rose, he’s talking to Rory about Star Trek fanfiction and won’t come up for air until like half an hour's passed or something.”

”Oh, thank God,” Rose muttered, the three of them crawling out from under the desk. 

"So do you make a habit of this?" Clara asked curiously. "Hiding under desks, that is."

"Only if I have classic literature I haven’t actually read to analyze." 

"Fair enough." Clara grinned, and Rose ducked her head, blushing. Amy’s mind raced - was  _this_ Rose’s mystery date? John wouldn’t exactly be pleased. Well, John really wouldn’t have been pleased in any situation that involved Rose being asked out by anyone but him.

The man  _had_  to get a grip.

"I should be going," Clara said almost sadly, pointing towards the door; "I came with some friends and they’re all headed out." She glanced at Rose. "I’ll see you soon though, yeah?"

Rose smiled, glancing at the number scrawled on her palm. “Yeah.”

Amy, Jack, and Tosh exchanged bewildered glances, a mischievous smile on Jack’s face. “Perv,” Amy muttered under her breath.

"So," Rose said brightly, turning back to them after having watched Clara disappear out the door, "Star Trek fanfiction?"

John’s head popped around a shelf to face them eagerly. “You like Star Trek, Rose Tyler?”

On the plus side, Rose’s knowledge of Star Trek was slightly more substantial than her knowledge of  _Persuasion_. (Mickey had dragged her to the theater to see that flashy new movie and sometimes the old things played on television at night and they were a damn sight better than infomercials.)

On the minus side, her knowledge of Star Trek consisted of the fact that there were some hot guys in the movie and a thing in blue with pointy ears. 

"Um…" she began. 

"No. No, she  _doesn’t_ ,” interrupted Amy, poking her in the ribs. “Trust me, you really don’t want to go there,” she whispered in Rose’s ear. 

"Do you know anything about Star Trek at all, Rose Tyler?" John tried again, slightly crestfallen.

"Um…" Rose had to commend herself on her gorgeously vast vocabulary. 

"We can have a marathon tomorrow night!" cried John excitedly, while Amy and Jack screeched "No!" in horror. 

"What?" continued John exuberantly. "It’s Friday, and we can have popcorn! The microwave in the back works now! It doesn’t explode! It actually goes  _ding_  when there’s stuff!”

"Fucking hell," groaned Jack, "I think we all have better things to do on Friday nights."

"I don’t," said Rose truthfully.

John grinned from ear to ear at this. He looked happy -  _too_  happy. 

"Yeah," Rose added slightly vindictively, "I’ve got a number; I’ll make a date of it. You have room for one more, John?"

Amy’s eyebrows shot to the top of her forehead. Jack covered his mouth to keep from making a snarky comment; painful thought it was for him, the situation decidedly did  _not_ call for it. 

"R-right," John stammered. "Of course. We’ve got lots of room in here."

Rose clapped her hands together happily. “Perfect! I should go see where Mickey’s gone off to; mum’ll be mad if we’re not home soon.” She waved at them and skipped off.

"Do I just not know how to ask a girl out?" John asked helplessly. 

Jack clapped him on the back. “Next time, don’t involve any major sci-fi franchises and maybe she’ll go for it.”

"But at least you like the movies!" Amy pointed out brightly.

John groaned. “But Rose with a  _date._ I don’t want to go.”

"It was your idea!" Amy cried. 

"It was  _my_ way of suggesting the two of us spend a Friday night together. “

"What, with the rest of us around?" Jack chuckled.

"I was very politely going to ask the rest of you to shove off once I was sure she was coming."

"Awww!" Amy cooed. "That’s actually cute, John. Not that we would have actually shoved off..." His eyes narrowed at her. "Sorry…"

”I think it could still work,” said Rory helpfully. “I mean, nice things still happen even when the girl you like is with someone else, right?”

Amy rolled her eyes at him; everyone else, predictably, winced. 

"Sorry, did I miss something?" Martha asked, coming back with one of Ianto’s extra-strong coffees in her hand. 

"What happened to that Tom bloke?"

"Shot him down," she responded airily. 

"But - but  _you_  were the one who went after him!” Tosh recalled confusedly.

"Changed my mind," she explained, glancing furtively at John. "Anyways, what’d I miss?"

"Star Trek marathon tomorrow," John said despondently.

"Ooh, I  _love_  Star Trek! What’s the problem, then?”  

"He’s emotionally compromised," deadpanned Rory. 

"Goddamn geeks," called Owen down the stairs. 

"I’m going up to bash his head in, give me a mo’," groaned Tosh. 

"I’m willing to bet five pounds they end up having sex on a barstool," laughed Amy.

Martha checked her pockets for spare change. “You’re on.”

"Make that ten," said John, perking up a bit. 

”So how did the exam go?” Amy asked Rory lightly.

"Oh, you know, basic joints of the upper and lower limbs, bit of bribery, same old."

"I’m sorry," she replied, batting thick lashes, "but I knew you’d do it for me."

Rory looked like he was about to fall to his feet and worship her.

The others tried not to audibly groan. The Torchwood employees, obviously thinking that for once there was some sort of sound barrier between the floors, actually  _did_ groan. Rory looked embarrassed; Amy, utterly confused.

"So," Martha said hastily, trying to save her friend from any further embarrassment, "John, are you taking anyone to this Star Trek thing if Rose is?"

"Depends," he said, dragging out the word. "D’you think Beatrice would go for me?"

"Beatrice?" Perhaps the name came  _a little_  too quickly out of Martha’s mouth.

"One of the spiders," Jack explained.

"Oh." Martha didn’t know whether to be relieved or second-hand embarrassed for John.

”Y’know…” she began haltingly after an awkward pause, “if you wanted a date, I mean, just as friends, of course - “

John’s mouth opened thankfully, and he began to say something along the lines of, “Martha Jones,  _yes_ , you’re a  _star_ , please take my firstborn child,” when Amy cut in abruptly. 

"You should take Rory!" she blurted.

Now, in Amy’s mind, she was doing a great service to the community. Rory likely hung around this ridiculous bookstore for the same reason that Martha did - because John Smith was quite a looker. Not Amy’s type, but she couldn’t deny it. And to repay Rory for being, well,  _Rory_ , she might as well do this for him. 

"Actually," stuttered Rory, "I wanted to take - "

"What’s with all the pairing up, anyway!" cried John. "We’re _literally_ going to be flinging popcorn around and watching starships on the broken projector!"

"…And you should do that while sitting next to Rory!"

"Amy - " warned a panicked chorus of the Torchwood employees; Amy didn’t listen, as was customary for her. 

"Wait - but - " Rory frantically exclaimed.

"Rory, shush, do it for me."

His eyes darted between Amy and John with a confused sense that though he was supposedly a med student, second in his class, he was most definitely missing something major right now. 

”I  _think_ ,” Martha interrupted, subsequently trying to save her friend from further humiliation and John from developing yet another crush on someone who wasn’t her, “Rory was saying that he has someone else in mind to take tomorrow night.” She sent a pointed look from Rory to Amy and back again.

"What?" Amy gaped slightly as she looked at Rory. "Who?!"

"I…" Rory started, desperately looking around as if some magical door might have appeared to help him make a swift exit. "…have to go. Now!" And, stuffing his hands in his vest pockets, he practically ran out of the bookstore.

"You’re my ride!" Martha cried, chasing after him. 

"Can I just not read people?" Amy asked, shaking her head. "At  _all_?”

"Well, who can blame you?" John agreed. "Rory’s a right closed book, he is. You could never tell what  _he’s_ thinking.”

The coffee shop’s workers smiled knowingly, while Amy looked even more confused than before. “Shove off!” she exclaimed in defense. “I’m supposed to tease you, not the other way ‘round.”

Jack opened his mouth to say, let’s be honest, what they  _all_  were thinking; Ianto glared at him and shut him up with a very intense kiss. 

"And they’ll be out of commission for the next hour," said John with a sideways glance. "You should go home, Pond, ‘s getting late."

"Someone has to deal with all the guests."

John bit his lip and shrugged. “Owen and Tosh’ll probably end up scaring them away, ‘cause I’m pretty sure - “

"Yeah, Martha owes me a fiver," mused Amy, looking up at the suspiciously quiet top floor. "But you?"

"Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay. I was planning on sleeping here tonight anyway - "

“ _John!_ " cried Amy, resting a hand on his shoulder. 

"No, I lied, the microwave’s still broken. It actually does not go ding when there’s stuff; it doesn’t go ding at all. It just keeps going and going and  _going_  until something catches fire - “

"Hey, if you’re upset about Rose, chin up, it’ll be fi - "

"I am most certainly not thinking about Rose Tyler! I never was thinking about  _Rose_  - “

Jack broke his kiss with Ianto in the corner to laugh derisively.

John glowered at him. “Rose Tyler is  _not_ on my mind, Harkness.”

The barista pretended to consider this. “You’re saying her name an awful lot for someone who isn’t thinking about her.”

"I’m not saying Rose’s name a lot! It would be ridiculous to say Rose’s name a lot. There is  _nothing special_ about Rose Tyler’s name.” He let out a long sigh. “Damn.” Ianto coughed awkwardly in an effort to not burst out laughing. “Besides! I have Martha as a date for tomorrow.”

"Don’t lead her on!" Gwen warned from up the stairs. 

John looked bewildered. “ _Lead her on_? No! She told me were just going as friends.”

"Yeah, that’s what she _said_ ," Jack muttered.

"But… but!" John tried to cope with this. "I’m just a bookstore owner. And she’s Martha!"

"Deep," Ianto replied. John scowled for possibly the thousandth time over the past two days.

"She couldn’t think… doesn’t she fancy Rory?"

It seemed as if everyone in the shop burst out in laughter - just the effect of the Torchwood employees’ snorts echoing around from the first floor, but it was disconcerting nonetheless. 

”Forget it, John,” came Amy’s capable voice, bursting through the laughter. “Martha’ll be fine, she always is, but if you dare get too touchy-feely with her then Rory won’t hear the end of it for weeks, which means I won’t hear the end of it for weeks, so  _don’t_.”

"I’m not touchy-feely!" indignantly cried John. "I just…don’t know what to do with my hands a lot…all the time… _oh_.”

"Yep."

"But Amy, what do I do now? I can’t consciously avoid being touchy-feely - that’s just plain awkward - but now that I know she  _fancies_  me - no, she can’t fancy me, she’s  _Martha Jones_.”

"Don’t ask me," said Amy with a shrug. "I wouldn’t know how to turn down someone who’s obviously in love with you."

"Oh, really now, Amy, do tell me more -  _ouch_!” Owen yelled from the top floor before cutting himself off with a strangled scream. “Tosh, what the fu - “

"He broke the barstool; ignore him," Toshiko called down, and then everything went silent again. Apparently neither of them were screamers.  

"Martha  _so_  lost that bet,” giggled Amy. “It’s official now. But her and Rory, you said? Hm, I bet I could make it work…”

John told her to go home again and shoved a copy of  _Emma_  in her hands. "Don't meddle."

Amy twisted her mouth into a musing smirk and stared into the distance. 


	4. Lord of the Flies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much where everything starts going to shit.

The next day, John obsessively straightened bowls of popcorn, making it so that the edges lined up with the table  _just so._

"You have a problem," Amy, ever-wise, assessed.

He rolled his eyes. “I just want the popcorn to look good!” 

"And yourself," she commented dryly. John seemed… different. He had lost the thick black glasses, and his hair didn’t look like he’d just spent an hour straight running his hand through it in confusion. Nothing, however, not even the prospect of impressing Rose Tyler, could apparently dissuade him from the old brown suit and sand shoes.

"Do we  _have_ to stay here for this?” Owen whined, his feet propped up on John’s desk.

The bookstore owner swatted his feet away. “Yes!”

"Remind me again," said Donna - who had come in that evening just for the sake of experiencing the sure catastrophe for herself - "why we all need to be here just so you can woo Rose?"

"No, it’s because I  _can’t_ woo Rose,” he reminded her, annoyed. “Figured it would be less awkward if it were more than just me, her, and her date here.”

Meanwhile, at home, Rose was attempting to explain to her mother and Mickey that  _yes, she had a date, and no, they did not need to know the details._

"The bookstore bloke was fishy," commented Micky with a wrinkled nose. "The coffee guy was fishier."

Rose let out a brief scream of laughter. “It’s not Jack, hell no!”

"Rosie, love, just give me a name? I’ll only do a  _little_  bit of internet stalking! I’m just  _worried_  - “

She shook her head. “Mum, I love you, but there’ll be boatloads of other people there and this is really just a trial run…” She tied her scarf firmly around her neck and stepped out into the chilly air. 

Clara was supposedly going to meet her at the bookstore, seeing as she lived right across the street. Rose pulled out her mobile and hovered over the brunette’s name in her contacts list, but put it back in her pocket. Best not to come off as too desperate.

As she walked downtown, Rose twisted a strand of hair absently into her mouth and thought about the tangled events of the past few days. For once in her life, she felt like she belonged - not like she didn’t have friends before, far from it, but these guys were _weird_. So much so that they seemed to need her just as much as she needed them. Especially John. But no, she wouldn’t go  _there_ , not now. 

Strange man, stranger shop. Where did he even come up with a name for a bookstore like ‘Tardis’? Was it French? Spanish? Latin? That man needed some better advertising.  _Seriously_.

Rose wondered whether they had room for another employee on their payroll - maybe. 

A few minutes later, she stood at the storefront, still contemplating the etymology of ‘Tardis’ - she would make it a point to ask John later - when she felt a light bump on her shoulder. Clara stood beside her, smiling. “Make a point of staring at the sky often?” she asked lightly.

Rose blushed. “I was trying to figure out what the name means - ooh! Maybe it’s that  _Star Trek_  language… Doth-something, right?”

Clara shook her head. “That’s  _Game of Thrones.”_

"Oh, so you’re a nerd, too?"

"No!" The brunette looked highly offended. "I dated this bloke, Richard, a while back, who was really into that show. Never heard the end of it, really."

"Riiiiight." Rose dragged out the word teasingly. " _That’s_ why you agreed that our first date could be a  _Star Trek_ marathon.”

"I agreed because I like you," Clara dissented. "And you’re pretty. Didn’t exactly hurt."

At least the woman was upfront about her feelings, unlike - no. Rose wasn’t thinking about  _him_ tonight. It was going to be a lovely date. _  
_

(A date with _him_ around, but still.)

"Rose Tyler!” greeted John effervescently the moment she opened the door. “I’ve got ten different kinds of popcorn - spicy, caramel - “

" - And the cheap kind with butter in packets for losers like me with no taste - " cut in Owen. 

"Yes,  _thank you_ ,” said John with a withering glare. He turned back to Rose. “So where’s your date -  _oh_. Clara, was it?”

"Yep," she affirmed perkily. "Clara Oswald."

It was a shame, honestly, John had really, really liked her when they’d met yesterday night. Now he had no qualms about shutting the door on her face. 

Except Amy dragged Clara inside before he could do just that, with a warning look at John. 

"Clara, have you met everyone?" asked Rose in a painfully obvious attempt to diffuse the tension. She was pointing to Martha, Rory, and the various bored-looking Torchwood employees scattered around the room, while John was fiddling with the projector. 

"Why’s it…not…working…" he groaned angrily. 

"Maybe because you’re trying to use the feather duster on it?" laughed Donna. 

"The duster works on everything!" John argued with a huff. " _Everything_."

”Duster?” Clara peeked over with curiosity, and John did his best not to roll his eyes. He was going to be polite. He could do polite. He  _was_ polite.

Rose tossed some of the spicy popcorn in her mouth and nodded. “Got this emotional connection to his feather duster, he does.”

Her date considered this. “Can’t blame him; I’m pretty tight with this one leaf. Long story.”

Rose shook her head. “Psychopaths, the lot of you.” She grinned and took Clara’s hand, leading her over to a sofa.

"So how did you two meet?" Rory asked in a helpful attempt to include the newcomer in their strange little group.

"It was actually here last night," Clara told him. 

"So we actually have John to thank," Rose realized. She shot him a dazzling smile. He tried his best not to gag, while all of the other employees (and Martha) winced something terrible.

John gave the projector one last frustrated poke with his duster, and suddenly the screen switched on. “It worked!” he cried out in delight.

"You do realize that those are mainly just meant for cleaning wood?" Donna asked.

"Well, I suppose… funny thing is, it sort of takes care of everything else, but it doesn’t really do wood."

Jack scoffed. “Yeah, if it  _did_  do wood, you wouldn’t need a girlfriend.”

"Fuck!" cursed Owen loudly as the rest of the room collapsed into hysterics badly disguised as coughing fits. " _I_ was going to say that!"

"You can’t beat the captain of the innuendo squad," shot back Jack with a wink. 

"Don’t insult my duster!" cried John indignantly. "I love my duster!"

This only set the room off into further giggles. 

"Yeah…," whispered Clara to Rose, nudging her in the ribs. "I’d say you’re better off with me."

"Never mind that," interrupted Amy, when John was nearly ready to elope with his duster somewhere far away and never see any of his so-called friends ever again. "What the hell are half these things, and how are any of them even different?" She held up a few plastic covers from an entire box of DVDs before shuddering in dismay. "We’ll be here all night!" 

"Ah," started John, launching on a  _very_  long monologue. ”You  _see,_ even though many viewers see  _The Next Generation_ as better than the original series, it really is important to start with the original series to see how humanity evolves and all that between the series. And then, of course, there’re the movies. Oh, and the reboots - ”

Jack regarded him in horror. “So  _this_ is what you do in your spare time?”

John frowned, offended. “What’s wrong with this?”

"Well, you could go to  _bars!_ And meet girls. Or guys. Or at the very least find a new duster.”

"I meet plenty of… people," he muttered in response, hoping that Rose would catch onto the fact that he was most definitely not the kind of guy who would get stuck on one woman and only one woman and gaze at her so long that she just turned into a pink-and-yellow blob of happiness.

Because that was  _certainly_  not John Smith's style.

Unfortunately, she was too busy having a good time with her date - a right pity, really.

Jack waved his hand in front of John’s face, and John’s attention snapped back to him. “Sorry!”

"You are  _so_ far gone,” Jack cackled.

”I’ll just pick one and put it in then,” grumbled John. 

"I doubt she’d notice even if you didn’t put in anything," aided Amy from behind John’s left shoulder. 

“ _Thaaank_  you, Pond,” he drawled, turning to glare at her vehemently. 

"If looks could kill, I’d be incinerated," she quipped, and then added, "but seriously, John, I’m just saying what we’re all thinking, right?"

Rory nodded from a nearby chair - he had no idea what Amy’d just said, but he was pretty sure it was probably accurate and/or worth nodding at.

John grabbed a bowl of caramel popcorn and shoved it in Amy’s hands in the hope that she’d avoid talking with her mouth full. No such luck. 

"I think the fact that the microwave burnt it a bit actually makes it taste  _better_ ,” she mumbled around a mouthful. 

"Go away and laugh at my microwave from the other side of the room, would you?"

"Fat chance," scoffed Amy. "Ooh," she suddenly burst out, picking up a movie cover. "Now that guy looks  _dishy_.”

John promptly snatched it away from her. “That  _guy_ is Captain James Tiberius Kirk, commanding officer of the USS  _Enterprise,_ and I would thank you very much not to refer to him as ‘dishy.’”

"Oi, Smith, you’re being too testy. Knock it off for a minute, will you?"

"Yes, because you’re such a good reader of human  _emotions,_  Pond.” He shot a pointed glance in Rory’s direction, but Amy didn’t notice, and neither did Rory; instead, he only caught Martha’s eye, and she just laughed and blushed.

Really, he had no idea what was happening in his own store anymore. The place had turned into a veritable playground of sex, confusion, and the occasional actual book.

"I need to find new workers who actually spend some new time, y’know,  _working_.”

Rose sat forward in her seat. “About that…”

”About James T. Kirk?” inquired Amy Pond. “Because god, he really _is_ dishy. The things I would do to him - ooh - John, please, I beg of you, put that movie in or I’ll do it for you.”

"Jim fucking Kirk," muttered Rory sourly under his breath. "Who’d have thought it?"

"Cool it, Spock," whispered Ianto comfortingly, while Owen screamed from the corner, "What the fuck are these references? I have no clue what’s going on!"

"Actually," Rose began again at a nod from John, "I was wondering if you guys had room for one more employee on your payroll."

"Donna, check the books," ordered John. 

"I’m not even on duty; it’s Friday night!"

"Don’t care - look, I’ll give up my own salary if I have to, for you, Rose Tyler - wait, what do you possibly think  _you_ could do for  _us_ , though?”

Rose didn’t have the heart to look affronted at anything John Smith said, so Clara glared at the shop owner for her. 

”I’ve - I’ve worked in a shop for years,” Rose offered helpfully, not noticing the glower on her date’s face and instead only seeing the over-the-moon look on John’s. “I can do check out, sort the books, even bribe potential customers if Rory’s not up to it any more.”

The med student was too busy fuming in the general direction of John’s huge stacks of  _Star Trek_ DVDs to notice. 

Donna glanced up from the accounting program on John’s computer. “Looks like it’ll work - what’s one more salary to take off our nonexistent profit?”

Choosing to ignore the last part, John clapped his hands together. “ _Molto bene!_ Rose Tyler, welcome to Tardis Books!”

The reactions of those in the room ranged rather drastically - there was John, visibly trying to keep himself from jumping up and down; Jack, pleased he could have another attractive person in the store around the clock to flirt with; Clara, who wasn't particularly happy at John's glee but found the occasion a perfect excuse to lean over and hug her date; Amy and Donna, wondering what  _their_ jobs would be if Rose was indeed employed; and Martha, whose expression was nearly as sour as Rory’s.

"I still have to quit my actual job," the new employee chuckled before her face fell drastically. ”Wait. Crap,” she blurted, turning pale, “my mum’s going to kill me!”

"Leave it," said John with a grin. "You’re here now; what else matters?"

"No…you haven’t met my mum. You are never going to meet my mum, if I can help it. Oh,  _christ_ …maybe I could make this part-time? Just do advertising? Then I don’t have to tell her…”

"Rose," reasoned Jack, gesturing about the shop, "I think advertising is kind of a full-time job. Cobwebs, horny spiders, weird owner who slips into Romance languages when nobody’s listening - "

"I can tell you to fuck off in French, would that help?" cut in John sulkily.

Jack continued, ” - old stuff everywhere, cool coffee on the second floor that’s so much better than the books under it - “

"Oh, enough shoptalk," groaned Amy. "Please, spare me. I just want to see Kirk’s abs. And - "

"Amy! Stop it!" chastised John, snatching the DVD away from her. "He’s the youngest captain in Federation history, not a heartthrob!"

Amy looked crestfallen. “There are no shirtless scenes?” She followed the DVD with a longing gaze. 

"That’s not why you’re supposed to watch it!" John cried in indignation.

"It can’t all just be people travelling around in space; that would be too boring," Jack cried. "Why are we here?!"

"The popcorn," Owen replied sagely. He had somehow snuck a whole bowl of it away from the table and into his lap; Tosh pulled it away with a disapproving look.

"Who’re you texting?" Clara asked Rose curiously; the blonde was tapping away furiously at her phone.

"Mickey," she replied with a grimace. "My friend. Trying to get him to make sure my mum’s in a good mood before I get home so at least when I break it to her, she’ll be happy."

”Mickey, huh?” muttered John. “Always - “

Martha threw the nearest book she could find at his head, which unfortunately for him happened to be  _War and Peace_. 

"Ow!"

"Shhhh!" she hissed, though she looked slightly downcast at his hurt expression. "This thing was your idea; don’t sulk."

"Martha - "

"Rose…Rose deserves better from you," she managed to say. 

He fell deathly silent.

"Amy?" asked Clara brightly, as if she couldn’t feel the tensions rising in the room. "Just put the movie in, will you?"

"Yeah, sure thing. Rory, hit the lights?"

"I should’ve just watched this alone," grumbled John at the same time Rory started to curse Jim goddamn fucking Kirk under his breath again. 

"Why didn’t we watch a romcom?" asked Ianto to nobody in particular. "Maybe we’d be happier if - "

"If I had my say, we’d be watching a porno, but shut up - you’re not helping either," responded Jack. 

Ianto looked petulant in response, so Jack leaned over and kissed him in order to appease him - the situation, not much to anyone’s surprise, escalated quickly, as Ianto’s arms wrapped around Jack and the two of them started to shift positions…

John picked  _War and Peace_ back up and hurled it at them. “Before we get that porno live,” he explained hastily.

The screen on the projector flickered on with the DVD’s menu, its owner dropping his weaponized book to play the disc. Amy flopped down on the sofa - unfortunately, next to Rory, whose fuming noticeably subsided when it became evident that he could easily pay attention to her rather than a certain captain.

John settled in as well, by Martha, who, unlike Rory, could not be placated by the object of her affection’s presence next to her. The two very obviously tried to create space between themselves, and Martha practically ended up in Jack’s lap as a result - not that he seemed to particularly mind.

Oddly enough, Ianto didn’t seem to mind either, leaning his head on Martha’s shoulder because  _god, they really should’ve been watching a romcom instead of this stupid sci-fi bullshit._

Clara’s gaze fixated on each of the friends’ faces in turn, and her expression gradually grew from minorly puzzled to one of extreme consternation. “Rose?”

"Yeah?" She idly licked some chili powder off her fingers because,  _damn_ , John Smith might really suck as a human being, but he could make popcorn like an angel. A non-cute, popcorn-making angel. 

"Does everyone here hate each other or something?"

"God, no," she said with a bit of a giggle, then stopped short. "Come to think of it, I’ve only known them for like a day longer than you. And they’ve been screaming and glaring for most of it…oh, crap."

(Owen and Jack had just started throwing popcorn at each other; John was getting caught in the crossfire and had to use  _War and Peace_  as a shield, sneaking glances at the opening scenes of the movie when he could.)

"You’re the only sensible person here," declared Clara, kissing Rose suddenly full on the mouth. 

Rose’s heart started beating faster, and she didn’t remember, for a moment, exactly what it was she was supposed to do with her face, or her limbs, or  _anything_.

Because, Jesus Christ, this felt good.

Clara’s lips were soft and plump, and tasted faintly sweet, like a delicate pastry. (Yikes - since when was Rose a metaphor-using person?) Her technique, too, was… admirable, to say the least. She was gentle, but firm, and Rose realized that she hadn’t had a kiss like this in a desperately long time. 

Possibly ever.

So she started to kiss back - hesitantly at first, but then more determined, trying to convey the confidence that she knew was buried somewhere within herself.

And then, after what felt like an intensely elongated time but what was likely only a few fleeting seconds, they broke apart. Rose opened her eyes, slowly so as to not to lose the passion, but enough to see Clara biting her lip and grinning. 

There was faint cat-calling in the distance - undoubtedly stemming from Jack - and the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh in a hard slap - the work of Martha, but it all seemed muted, unreal. 

”That was…” began Rose in a soft whisper, as their foreheads touched, then realized there wasn’t possibly a word that could accurately finish that sentence. “I haven’t really done this before,” she breathlessly confessed. 

"I couldn’t tell," responded Clara with a quirk of her lip. 

"Oh."

"Shit, was that too forward for a first date? I’ve been told I’m kinda lousy with boundaries - "

"No! God, no."

"Okay then, Rose Tyler. That’s a relief. You’re…" Clara pressed her hand tightly and Rose felt like she was falling through the floor.

She inadvertently glanced at John, who was staring at the fight scene on the screen fixedly, as if he was going to be quizzed on it. 

"Rose Tyler," he mouthed wordlessly. Wasn’t it  _his_  thing to use her full name like that?


	5. Master and Commander

The next afternoon, the bookstore was unusually quiet as Rose bounded in;  John and Amy were sorting books while Martha and Rory actually studied - or at least tried to. “I quit my job!” she announced brightly. 

John spun around to face her, a Shakespeare anthology nearly tumbling out of his hands. “W-wonderful,” he half-stammered, trying to rearrange his arms and pretend like he had some shred of grace left. 

"Your mum’s okay with it?" Amy asked. She was noticeably better at carrying the larger books around than her employer.

"Well," Rose started cautiously, " _Okay’s_ a funny word, isn’t it? She didn’t, you know, vow to exact revenge on any of you on the spot or anything, but she said that she might, erm, come over here to meet you, John.”

He blanched. “That’s a _bad_ thing, is it?” 

"Jackie Tyler can be… a force to be reckoned with," she explained, trying to phrase John’s imminent doom as kindly as possible. 

”I’ve met forces to be reckoned with,” said John brightly, because optimism was definitely the best way to deal with the fact that you were well and royally screwed. “Have you met the guy who actually owns this building?  _He’s_  a force to be reckoned with when I haven’t paid rent, and look, I’m still alive!”

"Um…" Rose Tyler responded with a delicate arch of her eyebrow, "I don’t think I’d mention the fact that you’re behind on rent in front of my mum. Actually, I’d recommend changing the name of this place and moving it halfway across the country before you meet my mother - "

John pulled out a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and jammed them over his ears viciously. “I don’t want to hear it. It’s a Saturday, the sun is shining, and you are  _not_  going to ruin my good mood, Rose Tyler.”

"I’m just warning you - "

He interrupted her, due to the fact that he couldn’t hear a single word she was saying rather than out of a desire to be rude. “Go get a coffee or look at videos of kittens on your phone or something. You’re not working here until you lose the frown.” 

Amy groaned and exchanged an exasperated glance with Rory. John was nearly easier to deal with when he was a moping arsehole, honestly.

Just then, the door to the shop opened, its bell jangling cheerfully to announce the presence of Rose Tyler’s mother, a cruel juxtaposition to the infuriated look on her face. “Mum -” Rose started cautiously.

"Where’s this Smith bloke?" Jackie demanded, hands on her hips. "The one who’s taking my daughter out of a  _perfectly well-paying job_ to come… here!” She gestured around the shop.

Amy nudged John on the arm, though the 'nudge' may have been more of a panicked punch than anything. He glanced up from his joyously noiseless state to see the store’s new visitor.

"Jackie Tyler!" he announced cheerfully, seemingly not noticing the wrath on her face. "Hello, there!"

"John," Rose started warningly. 

Jackie scowled. “What the  _hell_ do you think you’re doing with my daughter?”

"I wish we still had the popcorn around," Martha whispered wistfully to Rory - the situation certainly merited it. 

He blanched. “W-what?”

”Rose…Rose and I aren’t  _involved_  or anything!” John blurted with a nervous laugh. “I mean, that’s not…not something…I’d do…at all…”

Jackie’s glare could have incinerated an ice cube. 

"And we totally have money to pay her! Definitely. Loads of money." He scratched his head in panicked agony. "Look - customers!" he gestured wildly at Rory and Martha. "Hello, non-regular customers who actually buy stuff! Is this your first visit here? Isn’t the ambiance in this place lovely?"

"John!" hissed Rose frantically. "I told her about Rory and Martha! Don’t bother, seriously!"

"Oh, fu - " began John, then cut himself off because he was a gentleman with a polite vocabulary. "You know what, Ms. Tyler?" he asked suddenly, having an absolutely beautiful idea.

She narrowed her eyes.

"Rose’ll end up doing most of her work upstairs, in the coffee shop! So if you want to question anybody, it should be Jack and Gwen! Show yourself up, and I’m sure they’ll answer everything for you." He pointed her towards the stairs and gave Rose a relieved thumbs-up. 

She sighed and buried her head in her hands. 

”Least Jack can probably seduce her to calm her down,” Rory interjected in what he thought to be a helpful manner; judging by the frosty look he got from Rose, his intentions had failed miserably.

Jackie’s screeches were audible to those on the first floor, though they were so high-pitched that the employees and frequenters of the bookstore could only tell that she was shouting, not what it was she was shouting.

John was fairly certain he heard Jack curse him under his breath, but happily chose to ignore the barista.

Rose’s phone went off, and she glanced at it, giggling to herself. “Clara,” she explained to the others. Amy smirked at the so-called customers, noticing John’s forlorn-puppy expression.

"Right!" the owner said, snapping out of his pathetic state. He pointed to a box full of books. "Rose Tyler, I’m going to have you shelve those - they’re all fiction, and the system for them’s quite easy, alphabetical by the last name of the author." She pocketed her phone sheepishly and scooped up the box, walking to the opposite end of the room. "She has a girlfriend," Amy hissed beratingly to John. "You can’t keep staring at her like that." 

"I  _know_ that; their whole relationship has taken place in my shop.” He glanced over to Martha. “Do you want to get in on this?”

”No, you’re doing just fine on your own,” retorted Martha waspishly and regretted it in an instant. “Look, John,” she began, her hand hovering near his arm and practically  _aching_  to grasp it, “you’ve got to let her go.”

"But she’s here! Why does she have to be  _here_?”

"This place is magical, you know," Amy mused dreamily, as the sound of something breaking came from upstairs. "Most of the time, anyway. She’s not here for you, she’s here for  _it_. Same as me, same as Martha, same as Rory.”

The latter two burst into immediate coughing fits. 

"John, seriously, just move on. It’s been what - three days?" said Martha through her poorly disguised giggles. 

"But how?"

"You think I know?" she asked affrontedly.

"Ooh!" interjected Amy. "We’ll make him an online dating profile! I can see it now - John Smith, age nine hundred, dislikes animals and long walks on the beach."

"I am  _not_  nine hundred! And I’d rather date Martha than meet some fishy stranger from god-knows-where! No offense - we just…wouldn’t suit.”

"None taken," responded Martha flatly. "Y’know, I might as well make a profile too."

John frowned. “I thought you told me last week there was already a bloke you were into.”

Martha grimaced. “A lot can happen in a week.” At Amy's prompting, she switched on her laptop and after some random clicking, began to type, an intensely focused expression on her face. Amy shook her head at Rory, disdainful of John’s obliviousness. The med student likewise wondered for a brief moment what it would take for him to just suck it up and admit his feelings to her. He felt like he had been obvious already -  _had_ he been obvious? Or was he just being as unaware as John? 

It seemed that no one in the shop was able to pick up on even the most basic of signals.

"Hobbies?" Amy chuckled, taking a peek at Martha’s screen. "What’re you going to put, hanging around at a bookstore constantly?"

Martha hit her playfully on the arm. “Better than being woman who’s stuck working here.” Amy put a hand to her heart, mock-offended. 

Their banter was interrupted, however, by four loud, distinctive knocks on the front door. Rory turned around curiously. “The door’s never locked, is it?”

John grimaced. “He has this habit of knocking like that, just to freak me out.”

"Who?" Martha inquired.

"My landlord."

”Oh, god,” groaned Martha, “not that  _creep_!” 

"You know him?" asked Rory curiously.

"Mm, yeah, that one time - remember, finals week,  _you_  went home - I stayed afterhours to study, and he locked John in a closet and I had to wander around everywhere trying to find the key. Got no sleep.” She gave a world-weary sigh at the memory.

“ _Fucking hell_ ,” blurted Amy. “John, you can’t open that door!”

"It’s not locked, remember!" he responded, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose in a panicked fashion. "Okay, if he brings up the fact that I have not paid rent, don’t say anything. Change the subject. Talk about food; he really likes - I mean, I  _think_  he likes food.” 

"That’s nice," said Rory, turning to the door with wide eyes. "Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah, don’t call him by his name, he’ll punch the wall."

"He-who-must-not-be-named, then?" quipped Rory dryly, knowing Martha at least would get the reference.

She scowled. “Not a laughing matter. He goes by ‘ _The Master’_. Like seriously…”

A rather short blonde man clad in a highly _-_ expensive looking suit glided into the room, casting an imperious look over everything. “John,” he said smoothly, walking over to the owner of the place. “How long has it been?”

John gulped.  _Probably since last month when I forgot to pay the rent,_ he was tempted to say. “Too long?” was the answer he managed to squeak out.  _  
_

"Too long…" his landlord repeated with a pause, as if he were expecting something more at the end of that sentence.

"Too long,  _Master,”_ John grumbled. 

Amy sputtered a cough out, not doing a good job covering the “ _kinky_ " that escaped from her mouth. _  
_

"I have a purpose in being here, John," the Master informed him curtly. _Not rent not rent not rent,_ his tenant chanted mentally. “I heard you had a new employee?”

Rose came reluctantly from around the corner, as if she had been hiding out from this precise moment. “Hello?” The greeting was more of a question than anything. 

The Master extended a hand to her, which she took rather reluctantly. “Your companions never change much, do they?” he asked amusedly. Rose was relieved that the comment was seemingly directed towards John rather than her.

”She is not a ‘companion’ - she has a name!” indignantly burst out John, not even bothering to address the Master by title in his frustration. 

"And so you do, Rose Tyler," the blond said suavely, bending slightly to kiss her hand. 

John groaned; Rose gasped and took a shocked step back. "My name...how..."

"Leave him, Rose, he’s a creep," soothed Martha. "He has his quote-unquote  _sources_.”

"Ah, Miss Jones!" greeted the Master with undisguised pleasure on his face. "I don’t suppose  _you_  could tell me how much John’s paying this new hiree? His budget’s already so dreadfully low - “

"Keep your voice down!" hissed John; glancing worriedly at the non-soundproofed ceiling to upstairs, where Rose’s mum and Jack were suddenly deathly silent. 

"So about your unpaid rent - " started the Master in nearly a scream. 

"Should’ve used reverse psychology on the brat," whispered Martha to John after poking him in the ribs. 

"I knew it!" shrieked Jackie Tyler, careening down the stairs. "Rose, get your stuff, go beg for your old job back - this is _ridiculous_  - “

"I’m so sorry, John," apologized Jack, running after her. "Except wait, I’m not, because you foisted her on me  _without warning_  - “

Jackie made an indignant noise in the back of her throat, which was unheard by anyone, as the barista turned his attention to the landlord. “ _Oh_. Harkness, Jack Harkness. And you are?”

"Don’t even try," warned John. "He is goddamn awful in bed, and - "

"I resent that!"  resentfully cried the Master.

"Holy  _fuck_ ,” interjected Jack, gaping at the two of them. 

*”W-we knew each other growing up,” John stammered, running a nervous hand through his unusually spiky crop of hair. “I met a bunch of the girls he dated.”

"Ashamed, are you, John?" the Master asked, cocking an eyebrow at the hair boner. He glanced over to Rose, and a small, knowing smile spread across his face. "Oh,  _I_ see how it is.”

"Stop it," John said with a scowl. "I think you should go now."

"Very well." The Master bowed his head a little and started out of the shop. "Oh, and don’t forget about this month’s rent!"

John slammed the door after him.

Jack stared at him, wide-eyed. “W-w-w…” He seemed to have lost the ability to form words.

"Oh, shut  _up._ " John rolled his eyes. "Didn’t even think you could be scandalized anymore." He waited for the others to chime in with their teasing, as was customary, but they were all gaping at him, too. "Fine! I’m going to go to my office and do  _work!_ " 

”Point A,” ventured Amy through the silence, “you don’t have an office.”

"Point B," added Martha, taking up the gauntlet, " _what_  work?”

"You can’t just escape so fast, John Smith!" shrieked Jackie Tyler, shaking her fist. 

"Oi, that was _point C_ ,” said Rose with a mock glare. “Stick with the program, mum, will you?”

Jack exhaled in a long and shuddering sigh. “And point D, what the actual fuck even was that, and who the fuck does he think he is, and what the fuck were you two  _doing_  - “

"Jack! Back upstairs!" warned John. 

"You’re treating me like a badly trained dog! I was just curious, and I’m probably speaking for everyone else in this room - "

"I told you! We grew up together, ran around in the same circle of friends, you know, the usual. And then I met him after I was broke and jobless with a degree in theoretical physics and he rented this place to me, god knows why. And that’s the end of that."

"That’s obviously not the end of that," remarked Jack, making no move to go back upstairs. "I can’t even  _tell_  you what I’m thinking right now.”

”Do they do  _anything_ besides talk about each others’ sex lives here?” Jackie asked Rose, in a tone that wasn’t entirely negative.

"Erm…" her daughter started, "no, not exactly."

Jackie shrugged. “Might not be so bad after all.”

The bells of the shop door jangled yet again, a cheerful Clara Oswald skipping in. She hugged Rose, then waved to the others. John kicked at the ground, as if wishing for a proper punching bag.

"I love this day so much!" Jack cried giddily. 

"C-clara," Rose started with a stammer, "this is my mum, Jackie Tyler."

"Oh!" The brunette’s eyes widened. "Hi, Ms. Tyler." She held out a hand. 

Jackie took it. “Friend of Rose’s, then?”

"Yup, friend," Rose interjected quickly, not wanting her mother to have  _too_ many things to panic about that day. She didn’t, however, notice the hurt look that spread over Clara’s face as a result. 

Amy snatched John’s beloved feather duster from behind the shopowner’s ear and jabbed it into Rose’s ribs. 

"Ow!" cried Rose loudly, because  _that goddamn well hurt_. Amy raised an eyebrow at her; Rose gaped back confusedly.

(Jack stifled a sudden laugh at this, because since when did Captain Oblivious get the right to be  _that_  big of a hypocrite? Gwen heard his spluttering noise and dragged him back upstairs; he’d done enough damage downstairs for one day, she figured.)

"Ms. Tyler," Amy said finally to Rose’s mum, seeing as Rose wasn’t going to do anything herself, "I think everything’s under control here. You could stay a while if you wanted, but things’ll be really,  _really_  boring - oh, you could read something! There’s some untranslated German stuff in that box, and I’m sure - “

Jackie Tyler was out the door in three seconds flat. 

John heaved a sigh of relief. “Have I ever mentioned that I  _hate_  unexpected guests?”

"Ooh," said Clara flatly, turning away from Rose. "Untranslated German. Lovely. I’ll go over there then." She sighed, tone dripping with sarcasm, "I hope it’s Tolstoy."

Rose stared open-mouthed after her, utterly lost. “What was  _that?!”_ she mouthed to the others. Amy just shook her head, wondering how a person could possibly be so clueless; sometimes, she thought that she was the only one in the bookstore who had any idea what was going on.

Martha, noticing a distinctly pleased smirk growing on John’s face, promptly smacked him in the arm. “Ow!” he yelped, jumping away from her. 

She wondered, briefly, how the punch could have hurt  _that_ much, as she was still sitting down, but concluded that his height-to-weight ratio would make any sort of an attack more painful. Oh, how she wished Donna were around to insert some sort of snarky comment to that effect.

"Now if you don’t  _mind,_ " she told John, "Rory and I have another exam tomorrow, so we should actually get to studying."

"Can’t imagine why you came here," Rose chuckled. 

"All the other bookstore owners got annoyed when we studied but never bought anything," Rory explained. "And John’s used to no one ever buying anything, so."

"Oi!" he cried. "Plenty of people buy…  _things_ here.”

"Like?" Amy raised a curious eyebrow.

"Like Rose!" he cried triumphantly, pointing to the blonde. "Remember? Rose bought a book, didn’t you, Rose?"

Rose gaped at him. “Yeah…I guess…” and braced herself for the inevitable question. 

"So, how did you find it?"

"Actually…I…" she fumbled, thinking something along the lines of  _well, crap_. Then again, if school taught her one thing, it was proficiency at the art of bullshitting. Raising her chin defiantly, she commented, “I thought the plot was mediocre at best -  _so_  contrived.  And the characterization…left…no room for…development.” 

John paled and raised a confused eyebrow.

Not remotely attracted to that eyebrow, not at all, Rose continued, “And if you’ll excuse me, I think I need a very strong coffee before I continue work.”

As she disappeared up the stairs, Martha burst into laughter over a picture of the lymphatic system in her textbook. “God, I like her. I don’t think I realized how much I like her, but I  _like_  her.”

"At least one of us does," grumbled John, prompting a fresh fit of hysterics. 

"You  _really_  need that online dating profile,” said Amy as John leaned against a shelf and sighed morosely. “Or you could just call your landlord for - ” she coughed discreetly ” - stress relief?” 

Everyone laughed appreciatively - everyone except for John, whose face was going increasingly red, and Rose, who looked oddly put off at the idea.

"Hey, if you ever need a third…" Jack’s suggestive voice came drifting down from upstairs. 

"I’ll thank you all _,”_ John started, snatching the feather duster from Amy and waving it around the room, “ _not_ to speculate about my sex life.” He was met with more peals of laughter, this time disbelieving. “One day I’ll just pack up shop and move to Barcelona,” he grumbled. 

Rose plopped down next to Clara, who was flipping through a heavy German volume so quickly and aggressively that it appeared she was trying to fan herself rather than read.

"D’you want to do something tonight?" Rose ventured. "We could go see what’s at the cinema once I finish my shift. Or even before; I don’t think that John would mind having two fewer people around here to tease him."

Clara’s tone was cool and her words sharp as she looked up from the tome. “Sorry, I think I might have something going on with one of my other  _friends._ ”

Rose buried her head in her hands. “God, I’m sorry, that was just for my mum…didn’t want to tell her yet - “

"Why?" Clara asked pointedly.

"She’d give you a  _background check,”_ the blonde sighed. “I kinda just got out of a really bad relationship - and I mean _really_  bad - like ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now’ bad - and she freaks out over me a bit now.”

Clara resignedly asked, not looking up from the book, “So I  _am_  a rebound?”  

"What? No! You’re - "

"Nah, it’s fine - I knew I was kind of a surrogate for John, but this is just the icing on the cake - and god, you didn’t even think to tell me, I could’ve  _helped_  - “

Rose ignored that last bit to focus on the first. “ _John?_  What the hell are you talking about?”

"Rose, don’t  _lie_  to me - “

"I’m - "

"I knew this was really just a fling, but I dunno, I thought you were taking it a little more seriously - "

"If it was a fling, why’re you even bothering?" shrieked Rose, finding her voice again.

"You know what? I have no clue!" yelled back Clara, voice an octave higher than normal, as she dumped the book on Rose’s toe (in her defense, an accident) and stormed out the door. 

As Rose was too dumbstruck to do anything but stare, Amy nudged Rory, who ran out the door behind Clara. 

Watching Rory chase after Clara, Rose let out a frustrated noise that sounded vaguely like a muffled scream. “Why did you have to  _bloody_ mess this up for me?!” she demanded of John. 

"Me?" He pointed at himself, confused. "What did  _I_ do?” He wished that he had played some sort of a part in the downfall of their day-long romance; in that case, it would mean Rose was interested in him. But as it was, he honestly couldn’t see what he might have done to prompt this.

"You - you..." the blonde started, trying to think of a good reason.

"Stared after her like a lost puppy for days on end!" Jack finished from up the stairs. A yelp he emitted afterwards made it sound like Gwen had given him a good punch.

"Whatever." Rose grabbed her coat. "I’m going after her." 

Noticing the forlorn gaze John cast after Rose, Amy pointed towards the ceiling. “He has a point, you know.”

John poked her with the duster. “I’m not a  _puppy!”_ He turned to Martha. “Am I a puppy?”

"Mmm," she mused hesitantly. 

"Not you, too!"

”Ooh, I can write this online dating profile now!” said Amy with a sudden smile. "Martha, pass me your laptop."

"Not on work hours, you don’t," interrupted John angrily, peering over her shoulder. "Oi, that is not like me at all - I'm not an _actual_ dog -  "

"…hates cats…likes staring at people with his goddamn liquid brown eyes…has messy fur - I mean  _hair_ ….hates water….is easily distracted - ” read Amy aloud while typing furiously.

"Am not  _easily distracted_!” cried John, then instantaneously decided that it would be a fabulous idea to write love sonnets in Portuguese, and ran to the back room for a dictionary. 

"Hypocrite!" observed Martha, her med textbooks forgotten. 

"Want to finish the dating profile with me, now that he’s gone?" Amy asked. 

"Nah…I think…I’ll pass." Her eyes fell down again as she sighed - maybe lymph nodes  _were_  more interesting than John Smith.

"Then I really  _will_  make you one too!” decided Amy, ignoring Martha’s protestations. 

"I started...it was ridiculous...I _can't_ \- " began Martha; Amy clapped a hand over her mouth to shush her.

After Martha reread the same paragraph five times over and picked up nothing new from it, Rory came back in with a giant wet patch on his shoulder. “Dunno what happened - Clara started crying on me and then she started crying on Rose instead until she remembered she was crying  _because_  of Rose and I ran away.”

"Wimp," groaned Amy, rolling her eyes. 

”What’re you doing, then?” Rory asked, glancing at the screen.

"Finding John a romantic interest who’s not Rose or his duster," Martha sighed. 

"Or the Master," Amy chimed in.

"How creepy was  _he_?!” Martha cried, thinking of the landlord and his strange, all-absorbing gaze. _  
_

"Ugh." Amy shuddered. Turning her attention back to the computer, she mused upon the next question. "Income… is it possible for a person to make a negative salary?"

The other two snorted. “Maybe,” Rory ventured, “you could make me one of those while you’re at it?”

"What?" Amy frowned at him. "I thought you told me there was already someone you were interested in? Some bloke?"

Rory opened his mouth indignantly. “Not some  _bloke_!” Martha bit her lip, both eager and terrified to watch this play out.

Amy’s brow furrowed. “You _are_ gay, aren’t you?”

"No!"

"Course you are! You’ve been coming into the shop for months and you’ve never had a girlfriend."

Rory opened his mouth and closed it again, vaguely resembling a fish. Then, grabbing his bag, he decided to make the mature and well-considered decision: getting the hell out of there. He bolted from the shop with Martha grabbing her things and chasing after him, yelling, “You’re  _still_ my ride!”

"Martha! Your laptop had the dating profile!" shrieked Amy, before sighing and pulling up the window on the bookstore's giant outdated computer. 

John walked back in, claiming that, “You cannot just assume that he is gay!” in oddly stilted speech, pausing between syllables. 

"What’s up with you?"

"Iambic pentameter," he explained, counting out something on his fingers. "Yes - finally!"

Amy wrinkled her nose. “I thought you wanted to write the sonnets in Portuguese. Besides, that’d make a shitty first line for a sonnet.”

"Oh, huh. Fuck," he cursed in realization, and dashed back into the closet for his dictionary.

"No, wait, come back!" called Amy after him. "I still need a picture of you for the online dating profile page!"

John grumbled something loud and unintelligible, probably because it was half in Portuguese.

"Come back right now or I’ll make Jack pose naked instead and god knows who you’ll be matched with after that!"

Jack popped his head over the banister to shout“I resent that!”

Just then Rose and Clara walked in again, both wearing matching expressions that Amy recognized all too well as those of  people who had just finished making out with someone else against a wall before realizing that kissing while angry was a very bad idea and didn’t solve anything at all. 

"Your lip’s bleeding, Rose," remarked Amy,  _very_  tactlessly in retrospect.

”Oh?” Rose asked absentmindedly. She brushed her fingers over her lower lip, as if it were a detail she could have easily missed. Clara smirked mischievously, but Amy’s attention was directed towards John, whose forlorn look did nothing to erase the puppy metaphor. She snapped a picture with her phone and sent it to herself.

"This’ll be perfect," she crowed. " _Sensitive and not afraid to show his true feelings,_ " she narrated as she turned back to the computer and captioned the photo on the website. 

He pulled the computer towards himself, even though it was a monitor and he came perilously close to separating it from its various wires. “Now where’s the delete button…” he murmured. “Isn’t there supposed to be a big red button?” He noticed the amused looks on the women’s faces. “What?! I’m not good with technology, alright? I just wait for it to go ding when there’s… stuff.”

"He’s like a really clever five-year-old," Clara observed. Rose and Amy nodded their agreement. 

"I don’t have to take this anymore," John said slowly and deliberately. "Damn! I had the meter  _perfect_ before.” He started to murmur odd, broken syllables to himself, trying to find the ideal line. 

”What’s done is done,” Amy said sagely, trying and failing to keep a straight face. 

"You can’t make me dating profiles on the bookstore's official computer!" John retorted, giving up on iambic pentameter. 

"I  _was_  on Martha's laptop - “

"But the dating profile! God, what if someone  _sees_  that - “

"John, that’s kind of the point - "

"No, not on the _official shop computer!_ Tosh, oh, where’s Tosh - she has to clear my internet history before Donna comes in tomorrow, or else - “

"You could just go out with the sexy landlord I’ve been hearing so much about and this’ll all be over," cut in Clara, matter-of-factly. Amy and Rose burst into oddly hysterical giggles. 

"I’m done here," groaned John, though it was barely four. " _So_  very done. I think I’m going somewhere to get staggeringly drunk, and none of you are invited.”

He grabbed his overly-long brown coat and swept out the door, the coat billowing after him dramatically. 

"So what do we do now?" Rose asked awkwardly, feeling a little bad for the man. He was terribly nice; he had given her a job, after all, one that didn’t require hours upon hours in a menial retail store where she didn’t like anyone. And that  _hair_ didn’t hurt either.

She cleared her throat, suddenly remembering that she was standing next to her girlfriend.

"Keep on not working, I suppose," Amy grinned, looking back at the profile. "Oh, now it’s asking me  _personality_ questions.” She made a face. “What’s the first thing people usually notice about you?”

Amy typed in  _Too tall,_ just as Clara put in “duster” and Rose blurted out “hair,” still stuck on her earlier train of thought. Thankfully, neither of the other two commented.

(Clara wanted to, but had reached an understanding that there had been enough angry kissing for one day.)

Amy entered a few more responses and clicked the submit button triumphantly. “Now for Martha.”

Rose frowned. “Martha? I thought she was into John.”

"This is way too confusing," Clara dismissed with a shake of her head. 

”Just assume everyone - ” began Ianto, shrugging his coat on as he came down the stairs.

" - wants to fuck everyone else." finished Jack, two steps behind him. 

"You don’t have to be so  _crass_  about it!” cried Gwen, still on the top floor. “But yeah, Clara, that’s kind of the way things work around here. You put a bunch of twenty-somethings in a goddamn  _bookstore_  for most of the day - it makes sense.”

"Oh," she responded, not particularly enlightened.

"You two are leaving?" Rose asked Ianto. "So soon?"

He scoffed. “Like anyone else is going to come in here today. Besides, Gwen and Tosh can probably manage it. Even with Owen hanging around being an arse.”

"And _we_ need to make sure John doesn’t do anything idiotic," explained Jack with a knowing look at Amy. "You guys do  _not_ want to know what happened the last time he got himself drunk.”

"Actually, I think I do," Clara contradicted with a quick glance at Rose, conveying very clearly a sentiment along the lines of  _let’s see what your precious John Smith is **really**  like, shall we?_


	6. Crime and Punishment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is our pride and joy.

”I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Rose informed the others nervously as she, Amy, Clara, Jack, and Ianto made their way down a blustery London street. “Can’t we at least afford him a  _little_ privacy?”

"You don’t have to come," Clara replied pointedly, in a way that very much suggested to stay behind would convey Rose’s loyalty to John and only John - oh God,  _loyalties._ This was going to turn into an all-out war at some point.

"No, I will!" Rose cried a little-too-quickly (she didn’t want her lower lip to have to go through the earlier trauma  _again_ so soon). “Even if it’s just to keep the rest of you in line.” She uttered this line with her gaze aimed straight at Jack.

The five stopped in front of a small, run-down-looking (not entirely unlike Tardis Books) tavern. “Do we know for sure that this is the right place?” Ianto frowned.

Jack rolled his eyes. “John Smith is possibly the most boring human being alive. If that man’s been to more than one bar in his adult life, I’d be shocked.” The group advanced through the building’s peeling front door.

John Smith did not hear them come in, as he was swiveling on a barstool speaking to a small white pillow (presumably from the worn sofa in the room's corner) in baby talk. “It’s called an Adipose,” he slurred to the bartender miserably. 

"Is  _this_  what happened last time he got drunk?” inquired Clara in a stage whisper from the doorway. 

"He’s so  _pathetic_!” Rose nearly sobbed, gazing at him kind of as if he was a three-legged puppy. 

"Last time he thought the bookstore traveled through time and space - " began Ianto. 

"And he tripped and pushed a bookshelf on both his own head and mine and said it was okay ‘cause neither of us could die," finished Jack. "But yeah, he is  _so_  pathetic.” He, like Rose, was gazing at John as if he was a three-legged puppy. The difference is that Rose was a compassionate veterinarian in this scenario and Jack was a hawk who hadn’t eaten in three days. 

“ _That_  is eye-sex,” whispered Clara to Rose. “D’you want to ditch this and go have some in a dark corner?”

Rose nodded dumbly, because she totally was  _not_  jealous. Hell, if Ianto could keep a straight face, so could she.

”So,” Amy started awkwardly, glancing at Ianto. She  _liked_ the barista, certainly, but she didn’t actually think they had ever had a proper conversation, just the two of them. 

"Do you just want to go get pissed?" he asked her bluntly. 

"I really,  _really_ do.” She grinned and took his arm as they walked over to the counter together. 

Further down the bar, John was slurring out some sort of tale about an intergalactic version of Rose. “She harnesses  _all_ the power of the Vortex,” he gushed, “and saved me and you and EVERYONE on Satellite Five.” He gripped Jack’s shoulder. “ _Everyone,_ Jack.”

"I wonder why we don’t get you drunk more," Jack mused, intertwining his fingers with John’s. The bookstore owner, for his part, didn’t seem to mind (or perhaps he didn’t notice; he was busy moaning about some parallel universe). 

“ _Clara!”_ John stabbed his finger so that it pointed across the bar. “ _Clara_ is the parallel universe keeping us apart.” 

Jack spared a quick glance for Clara and Rose staring soulfully at each other in the corner of the room. “Yeah, you really can’t blame her for the fact that Rose just isn’t that into you. And besides, it’s totally every girl’s dream to be called a giant ball of gas by a whiny jerk.”

John pulled himself upright with indignation, inadvertently tightening his fingers around Jack’s. “A universe is  _not_  a giant ball of gas!” His eyes went briefly out of focus as then hiccuped, “That would be  _Mars_.” Taking another sip, he commented sagely, “And I’m  _not_  a Martian.”

"Hey, I think you mean Jupiter," corrected Jack with a perfectly straight face, using his free hand to slide John’s glass of god-knows-what far out of his reach. 

"No, I meant Barcelona. The dogs have no noses."

"The hell is wrong with you?" groaned Jack, trying to catch Ianto’s eye for aid and assistance and failing miserably, considering that he and Amy were eyeing Clara and Rose and apparently playing a drinking game concerning which of the two women blinked more. 

John spontaneously pulled off his tie and knotted it around his head, rumpling his hair severely in the process. “ _Nothing_  is wrong with me! Look at me, I’m perfectly fine!” he cried with a raised eyebrow, as if daring Jack to contradict him. He then hiccuped while staring at the barista intently, as if the noise was intended to make the Jack take him more seriously. “Right,” the latter said firmly. “Time to get you home.”

"What?" John asked indignantly. "I only just started!" He gestured to his half-drunk glass (one of many he had plowed his way through in a frighteningly short space of time). "This drink  _needs_ me, Jack.”

Jack clapped him on the back. “And you need me to save you from a sad, early death of alcohol poisoning.” He paused to consider whether that would be a better option for John than continuing on with his sorry little bookstore life, but decided to not keep going with the train of thought, lest he decide that the first was the superior choice and let the man keep drinking. _  
_

He guided John out of his seat, holding onto his arm so that he wouldn’t topple over. The other man placed his head on Jack’s shoulder affectionately. “You take such good care of me, Jack!” he exclaimed happily. Getting closer to his ear, he whispered confidentially, “You’re my favorite companion.”

When John started turning the doleful puppy eyes on  _Jack_  rather than Rose, Ianto decided it was time to become acquainted with the strongest alcohol to be found behind the bar. 

Jack made horrified eye-contact with him, and struggled over, dragging a limp John behind him. “Look, Ianto, I’m taking him home - “

"Okay, you do that," he responded dully.

"Don’t do anything stupid and find someone nice here," said Jack, completely ignoring Ianto’s tone while kissing him briefly on the forehead and somehow managing to get John out the door. 

"Ouch," sympathized Amy to Ianto, observing the scene with interest.

"Don’t worry about it; we’re not exclusive or anything, but…" Ianto sighed mournfully into his glass. 

Meanwhile, outside, John had decided to start giggling manically at nothing in particular; Jack was slowly losing patience with him because he’d left his jacket at the shop and  _god_ , it was cold. 

Then again, he might as well take advantage of the situation. Not that Jack very much enjoyed taking advantage of situations, but in this case, he thought it might possibly be worthwhile. Maybe. 

"So," he began, grinning at a John with a hopefully loose tongue, "what  _exactly_  do you think about your landlord, huh?” 

An involuntary shudder ran through John’s stick-like body. “He’s frightening,” the man whimpered. “He likes to be  _dominant.”_ With that last word, he dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.

Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Kinky, I like it. Tell me more.”

"Sometimes he talks about the Teletubbies," John continued, a goofy smile spreading on his face.

"Decidedly less kinky." Jack smirked. "Or  _more,_ depending on what you’re into.”

"I’m into  _Roes.”_ John’s drunken slur caused her name to be mangled. “Roes Tylah. Roes, Roes, Roes,” he babbled on.

Jack wrinkled his nose in utter distaste. “God, I thought you’d have something more interesting to talk about if you were drunk.”

"Roes is interesting!" John cried defensively. "Her  _hair,_ especially.” He stared at the barista intently. “Have you seen her hair, Jack? It looks like the color of…” He squinted ahead, attempting to think of a decent simile. “Of different blonde hair.” He nodded sagely.

"Your hair’s not so bad," Jack offered, running a curious hand through the well-groomed crop on top of the other man’s head. He had wanted to do it for years by that point - one just  _had_ to wonder what that majestic hair felt like - but there was no way John was letting him go near it sober.

And that was when John Smith managed to let a very pathetic sounding whimper escape his mouth, because apparently he had a little bit of a  _hair kink_. 

Jack didn’t find this unexpected, considering that John had the most gorgeous hair ever known to humankind, and that gorgeous hair only gained appeal after he touched it, being soft and slightly tangled and vaguely staticky under his hand. 

The kind of hair that inspires run-on sentences, quite frankly. 

John looked at him with giant brown eyes that seemed to say, “If you dare stop, I will fling you down that sewer grate, I swear to god,” and Jack could never say no to human manifestations of puppies - which was why he  _pulled_. 

In retrospect, it was either the best idea of his life or _an awfully fucking bad one_ , because about ten things happened at once after that.

Well, it was more like four things. Four things and no lizard.

Thing one, John squeaked and stumbled over the pavement. 

Thing two, Jack caught John and stopped him from tripping and breaking every bone in his body. 

Thing three, suddenly John was  _kissing him_  and it was quite possibly the second-best kiss he’d ever had in his life, because contrary to expectations, John Smith was  _not_  a terrible kisser and had the lips of an angel and the tongue of a devil and _really fantastic teeth_. 

Thing four, which was  _really_  boneheaded, Jack decided to pull on John’s hair again, and before he knew it they ended up properly making out against the wall of some random building - they were probably getting horrified looks from passers-by, but Jack couldn’t bring himself to care at that point. 

They breathed heavily, the air around them feeling as if it were growing more and more heated. Jack went at with as much ardor as he could muster - not, perhaps, the best of decisions in retrospect, but he figured that if this was to be his one chance, he may as well go for it. “Should we take this,” he muttered between fervent osculations, “take this to my flat?”

John, breath laced with alcohol (though that wasn’t altogether a deterrent), nodded vehemently, so Jack hailed a nearby cab and the two spilled into its back, arms wrapping around each other the moment after Jack supplied the driver with an address. The taxi driver rolled his eyes at them directly into his mirror, but it was hardly as if either noticed.

And a few minutes later, the men fell into the front door of Jack’s apartment, shutting the door very firmly behind them.

Back at the bar, Ianto nursed a complicated cocktail of some variety, trying to think precisely  _not_ about what was happening there. “If it’s any consolation,” Amy supplied, trying to be helpful, “it’ll never keep up as soon as John realizes what he’s done.”

Ianto scoffed, his hand shaking so hard that he spilled some of his drink onto the counter and earned a glare from the stoic man behind the counter. 

"What?" inquired Amy. "John’s my best friend, and he really would not do anything like  _this_  sober. Hell, for all I know, maybe Jack’s just being an upstanding citizen and letting John sleep it off on his couch - oh, who am I kidding?” She cut herself off with a peal of hysterical drunken laughter. “God, I wonder where they are right now, because I really would pay money to see - “

"Not helping, Amy."

"Chin up, it’s only going to be a one-time thing, anyway - "

"That’s what  _I_  said way back when Jack and I started - “

"And it’s not like John’s some kind of magical sex god or anything - "

"But Jack is!" exclaimed Ianto with a strange cross between a pained groan and a lovestruck sigh. 

Amy pulled a face. “I did not  _ever_  need to know that. I mean, I pretty much was absolutely sure, but I didn’t need to  _know_.” 

Ianto glanced at Rose and Clara nuzzling noses in the corner, drunk on nothing but each other. “To be young and in love,” he proclaimed wistfully, toasting the air.

"Right, that’s it," cried Amy suddenly, yanking her bag off the back of her chair. 

"Huh?"

"You’re wallowing, and I loathe  _wallowing_  people. I’m getting you out of here.” 

"But - " Ianto found himself dragged out the door before the bartender could settle their tab. 

”Where are we going?” he groaned, Amy pulling him out into the street by the hair.

The woman paused, not having thought that through. “Somewhere without alcohol,” she decided.

"Good luck with that," Ianto replied amusedly - London’s late-night streets were positively buzzing with drunken twenty-somethings. He nodded suggestively at one particularly attractive man passing by before realizing that Amy still held a tight grasp on his hair, and, as such, he probably looked like a lunatic. "Everywhere’s got something to drink."

Her eyes lit up. “Not  _everywhere_.” Five minutes later, Ianto Jones found himself being thrown into the front door of Tardis books. Amy nodded, satisfied. 

Back at Jack’s apartment, the two men lay beside each other, hot breaths humidifying the otherwise stagnant air. “Are you sure?” Jack murmured;  _ideal_ though the situation was, he didn’t want to plain take advantage of the bookstore owner.

John nodded his assent as he slipped out of his ever-present blue shirt. “Sure,” he whispered.

After an hour that he wouldn’t remember later, John fell into a dreamless coma-like sleep stretched out the wrong way on Jack’s bed, regardless of the fact that it was just barely nine. 

Jack sat up until three, waiting for John’s hangover to wear off and hopefully a round two. And he was sure that this more sober round two would be a definite possibility, considering that round one was utterly fabulous. He’d just have to convince John that yeah, if they went into work the next day at different times and acted positively nonchalant, nobody would know the difference. 

Ianto, meanwhile, was stumbling rather miserably around the bookstore, regretting the fact that everything reminded him of his currently-absent not-quite-boyfriend. 

"We…we snogged in this corner. Ten times," he slurred to Amy. 

"Ten and counting," she comforted.

"Who’s been counting?" asked Owen, leaning down the stairs as he closed up the coffee shop. "Ooh, Amy, wouldn’t have thought it of you."

"Shove off," she groaned. 

"Right," he said with a wink, running down two steps at a time. " _I_  have got an actual job I need to get to, unlike the rest of you lot.”

"Oi, you’re not going anywhere!" cried Amy. "You’re the only one here who can cure his hangover."

"I’m overqualified."

"Like hell you are."

"What about my broken heart?" inquired Ianto pathetically. "Can’t you fix  _that_?”

”Disgusting.” Amy shook her head in distaste. “So…  _dramatic_.”

Owen regarded her amusedly. “Like you aren’t?”

"Me?" she asked indignantly. "When have  _I_ ever been dramatic?”

"Earlier today when you declared that Rory was gay and embarrassed him so much that he ran out of this place?" Ianto suggested, glad that fun was being poked at someone besides himself.

"Wasn’t my fault," she grumbled, suddenly very interested in her own shoes. The men exchanged raised eyebrows. "Alright, it wasn’t  _all_ my fault.”

Not feeling particularly inclined towards keeping up that conversation, the Scot turned her attention to John’s computer, which, ancient as it was, liked to spend a long time turning on. When the desktop finally showed up, she grinned and started typing.

"What’re you doing now, then?" Owen inquired, peeking over her shoulder.

"Promised Martha I’d make her a profile, too," Amy explained. "And it’s better than listening to you two, at any rate." She paused after a moment. "Interests…"

"Spending all her time at a bookstore?" Ianto proposed.

"Lusting after said bookstore’s owner?" Owen added. Ianto didn’t look very pleased to hear John mentioned.

Amy buried her forehead in her hands. “How is it that she’s been coming in every day for  _months_ and we barely know anything about her?” she asked once she emerged. 

“ _You_  don’t,” blurted Owen affrontedly. “Because you, Amelia Pond, are the most self-centered child I’ve ever met.”

Ianto disguised the word ‘hypocrite’ in a cough. 

"I happen to know," continued Owen, "that the future Doctor Martha Jones likes pistachio ice cream, is the biggest Harry Potter geek I have ever met, is fantastic at random trivia, happens to be the the best person in  _existence_  to have around in a crisis, went skiing in the Alps once and happens to be a fucking master at it - “

Amy’s eyes widened dramatically, and she missed twenty seconds of his spiel in shock.  

" - has the worst relationship with her mother in existence, and did I mention she’s top of her class?" Owen finished breathlessly. 

"Yes. Twice," helpfully commented Ianto. 

"Oh," Owen muttered, turning a very visible shade of pink and running out the door, saying something inaudible about being late for the hospital’s night shift. 

"Well, thank god for small mercies!" Amy brightly chirped, typing maniacally on Martha’s profile page. 

Ianto just then felt the urge to burst into drunken tears, reminded by Amy pounding on the computer of the time he and Jack had sex on John’s desk. 

Amy regarded him with a mix of pity and revulsion, trying her best to type with Ianto weeping abjectly into her shoulder. “Can’t decide whether you or Owen’s more far gone,” she muttered as she typed in a few last answers on Martha’s profile. “Done!” she exclaimed, hitting the  _submit_ button with a flourish. “And Martha’s matches are…” She gasped.

"What?" Ianto asked, looking up with bloodshot eyes.

"John Smith," Amy whispered, staring at the screen at the man’s familiar profile picture. They were interrupted by the jingling of the door’s welcoming bells. "Not open," she called wearily.

"Oh," Rose Tyler’s voice came from behind them. "Didn’t know anyone would be here." She and her companion - none other than Clara Oswald - started giggling inexplicably.

"Happiness," Ianto groaned, collapsing onto John’s desk. The newly-arrived women stared at him in confusion.

Amy shook her head and tutted at the barista. “Drunk and sad,” she explained. “He’s afraid Jack’s sleeping with John.”

"Jack and  _John_?” Clara asked. She paused to consider it. “Actually, I sort of like them together…”

Ianto began wailing again.

”Well, he shouldn’t be  _afraid_  that Jack’s sleeping with John because we  _know_  that Jack’s sleeping with John,” Amy explained to Clara. “And god, aesthetically, I’d give anything to see it.”

"What the hell?" inquired Rose - an understandable inquiry considering that she and Clara huddled in their corner had missed John and Jack leaving together.

"He was drunk, Ianto’s lover boy took him home," Amy said bluntly. "Knowing Jack,  _stuff_  happened.”

"Is probably  _still_  happening,” added Clara, not noticing Ianto turning a very unfortunate shade of green.

Amy sighed wistfully.

Ianto when drunk was considerably slower on the uptake than sober-Ianto (who in his defense was spectacularly bright), and it took him two minutes of silence for things to click. “If we get John with Martha,” he hiccuped, “then Jack’s alone again!”

"Ugh," Clara interjected, pulling a face. "I don’t think sticking him with her is a great idea. Poor Martha."

"Poor John," counted Rose, and the two of them exchanged a short glare. 

"Not again," groaned Amy. Ianto looked quite a bit more gleeful. 

”It wouldn’t work, anyway,” Rose interjected unusually quickly. Faced with surprised stares, she stammered out, “They know each other already, right?”

"That could make it even better," Clara countered. "None of that awkward getting-to-know-you business."  _And one less challenge for me._

“ _Business,”_ Ianto echoed contemptuously. 

Amy grinned. “It’s decided, then. John Smith and Martha Jones are going out on a date.”

Clara and Ianto cheered while Rose groaned. Noticing the slight scowl on Clara’s face, though, she relented, trying to muster a small smile. It would work, of course it would work. They were both unabashed dorks. Why shouldn’t it work? 

She was spending decidedly too much time on the subject.

Looking back at the dating website, she raised her eyebrows. “You and Martha must be close; that’s a  _lot_ of information.”

The Scot laughed for a long minute. “That’s Owen’s doing.”

Clara and Rose took the seats across from her simultaneously. “ _Owen?”_ the brunette asked incredulously. 

Amy nodded in confirmation. “You two missed it by just a few minutes; he was here and when I said I was stuck on Martha’s interests, he started rattling off all of this.”

"Martha and  _Owen_ ,” Rose mused. “But isn’t he with Tosh?”

”Owen’s only here part time, you know - he’s got a job at the hospital and he actually  _works_  there - “

"Night shift?" Rose asked Amy. 

"Yeah," answered Ianto for her. "Which is why he’s a lazy bastard during the day; he needs  _some_  sleep. Gwen keeps him around out of pity, but that doesn’t really explain why he acts like such an  _asshole_  - “

"Come on, he’s okay," admitted Amy while Ianto scoffed.

"But yep," Amy continued, "it explains a lot. He’s got this weird admiration-crush thing on Martha, and they flirt _constantly_ , I swear - how did you miss that?”

"She’s probably had other things on her mind," said Clara breezily, raising a frigid eyebrow at Rose. 

"So can we try that out if foisting Martha on John fails miserably?" Rose inquires, ignoring Clara completely. 

"I think it’s more like foisting John on Martha," Clara counters. 

Ianto, not noticing the tension at all, sighs and comments, “Tosh would eat us alive. She  _already_  thinks Owen’s settling - complete bullshit, really.”

"Still worth a try," Rose says vindictively, then regrets it instantly. 

*Clara exhaled a long breath. “It’s getting late,” she decided with a cool glance to her watch. “I should probably go home.”

Rose winced; she had gone too far, and she knew it. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked hopefully, rising as Clara did.

The other woman considered her for a minute, giving a little shrug. “Sure,” she conceded. The blonde reached in to hug her, and Clara returned the gesture, though half-heartedly. Rose watched her leave the bookstore and then groaned, collapsing back into the armchair opposite John’s desk.

"I never have to spend any money on terrible rom-coms again," Amy sighed with pleasure. "All of your lives are one." Rose and Ianto glared at her together. "Oh, you know it’s true."

They couldn’t exactly argue with her on  _that_ point.

"Well,  _I_ say it’ll work,” the ginger concluded, back on the John/Martha subject. “And that’s all that really matters, because  _you’re” -_ here she pointed to Ianto - “too drunk, and  _you’re”_ \- to Rose this time - “too hung up on John.”

The blonde let out an indignant cry. “‘Hung up on John?’”

”Yes,  _hung up_  on John,” Amy repeated. “Who, I’d like to remind you, is currently very likely naked in Jack Harkness’ bed.”

"Oh, god," blurted Rose involuntarily. 

"Told you so," smugly retorted Amy. 

"I’m going home!" Rose declared before marching out the door, giving Amy no opportunity to say goodnight. 

"And I guess I’m stuck here looking after  _you_ ,”  she said scornfully to Ianto, her tone belied by her sympathetic pat on his shoulder. 

Rose Tyler, meanwhile, was up until four in the morning miserably fixated on the image of John naked in Jack’s bed. 

John Smith was indeed naked in Jack’s bed at that exact time, and Jack was also naked in his own bed. John was quite possibly the most hungover he’d ever been in his life, and had a steaming mug of coffee in his hands made by Jack’s temperamental coffee machine. 

And Jack was taking advantage of John’s half-addled brain by nibbling on his ear. Classic. 

However, contrary to Rose Tyler’s imaginings, they were actually getting caught up on _Game of Thrones_ on Jack’s laptop. 

Which was apparently what John Smith liked to do in bed; Jack couldn’t explain it, but he wasn’t complaining, considering that John was utterly adorable when sleep-rumpled and staring at a screen. 

John let out a long yawn, his eyelids fluttering up and down. “Slay them with your dragons,” he muttered to some gorgeous-looking blonde character.

Jack had no idea what the hell the bookstore owner was talking about, but it sounded undeniably hot. He ran a hand through John’s admirable crop of hair again - not anywhere close to the first time he had done that in the past few hours, but the hair really did possess some sort of magical qualities. 

In response, John - perhaps because the hangover was dulling his typical aversion to, well,  _Jack_ , or perhaps because he really did enjoy it - rested his head on the other man’s shoulder and moved closer to him, moaning a little.

The barista smirked to himself, wrapping an arm around John’s shoulders. This felt weirdly… well, not right. But why?

His mind flashed to Ianto, whom he had left drinking in an unfortunately tetchy fashion alongside Amy. Oh, God,  _Ianto._ They weren’t exclusive. Never had been. Ianto was free to take home whomever he liked.

But Jack still felt undeniably guilty. 

Toshiko had once, a few months ago, defined love to Jack as “it’s not like you’re flying or anything, but you’re grounded. Happy, but grounded, and there’s no place you’d rather be. That’s why I love my computers, and the thing with Owen’s just infatuation,” she had sighed. “No, it’s no use, I love him,” she’d finally concluded as she downed an entire cup of coffee in one go. “Well, fuck.”

Except, now, Jack was pretty sure Tosh was right. Ianto Jones was the kind of person who stopped him from dropping coffee on John's head from the upper story, who stopped him from charging ten pounds extra to rude people, who stopped him from running into oncoming traffic because ‘who even gives a shit anymore?’

And on the flip side, Ianto made him inexplicably happy. Always. 

Except now, when his internal organs seemed to be wracked with guilt, and nobody, not even Ianto fucking Jones, had the right to do that to Jack Harkness. 

So yes, this thing with John was just that - a  _thing_ , but it was a pretty damn good one, that was a given. 

"Hey, John?" he asked quietly. 

"Shush!"

"How long until the episode’s over?"

"Shut up, you stupid lump!" He was staring so intently at the screen that Jack wasn’t even sure that he was the one being addressed. 

"But  _are_  you up for a round two? Because I know I am.”

John managed to bring himself to hit the pause button, and stared at a freckle on Jack’s shoulder as he hazily categorized all of his objections.

Even in his half-still drunk, half-hungover state, there was  _some_ logic left in John Smith’s brain. He was still aware - extremely aware - that he was going to regret this in the morning. It was Jack, after all. Jack who worked just a floor above him. Jack who could make his life miserable with the taunting. 

(But he was already going to regret the first round, so why not go for another? It wasn’t like he hadn’t thrown his dignity out already. Plus, Jack was attractive.  _Painfully_ attractive.)

Lazily pushing away his qualms with the action, John pulled his gaze off the computer and rested it on Jack, soaking the man up with his eyes. And slowly, deliberately, he wrapped his arms back around Jack’s neck, pushing their mouths together in a gesture he would sorely question later.

The barista moaned submissively and shifted down. John followed his position until he was lying on top of Jack, the two sprawled across the bed and the laptop forgotten, clattering to the floor. 

(A few sleepy London blocks away, an uncomfortable shudder ran through Ianto Jones’ body.) 

John broke the kiss after approximately two seconds, causing Jack to groan with despair and ineffectually cant his hips upwards. 

"I’m not  _that_  bad at this, am I? Nobody’s ever thought I sucked before, even when they’re mostly sober.”

"It’s my hair!" cried John, propping himself up on his elbows. "This has happened before, you know. And it’ll be so  _obvious_  that I had sex in the morning, because - “

Jack pulled John back to his lips by twisting his fingers in the mussed strands at the nape of John’s neck. “Because of that?” he whispered, hopefully seductively.

"Yes,  _that,”_ said John with a grimace, not influenced by the totally non-seductive tone. 

"If your hair’s the most of your worries, you’re more of a coward than I thought you were."

"If anyone finds out, and I know they’re going to find out - "

“ _Wimp_.”

"Hell, even  _you’re_  going to hold this over my head for the rest of your life!”

"And you can’t handle that?"

John’s response was to glare for five seconds, then mutter, “Fuck you and your fucking eyebrow and your goddamn fucking _dimples.”_

"Misplaced anger, hm?” Jack murmured distractedly, his hands wandering god-knows-where and there really wasn’t anything John could or wanted to do to stop them from doing that wandering thing, so he decided that the best way to shut Jack up was to bite his bottom lip in half. 

As Jack actually whimpered because  _who the hell gave a prudish bookshop owner the right to have such a ridiculously sexy tongue?_ , Amy across town looked worriedly at Ianto curled up asleep in a beanbag chair, and tucked another blanket over his shivering form.

When Ianto stirred awake again, he was met with the dark, empty, early-morning interior of Tardis Books. Amy had apparently vanished. “Oh, God,” he muttered. Waking up drunk and alone in a bookstore - he had reached new levels of pathetic. _  
_

He pulled himself out of the beanbag - _not_ an easy feat - and plodded up the stairs, where he made himself a ridiculously strong cup of coffee and gulped it town, trying to combat the simultaneous waves of nausea, headache, and shame.

After he had nursed three more mugs’ worth of coffee, the welcoming bells chimed downstairs; Ianto decided to drag himself back down lest his lethargic body go into caffeine shock.

The sight on the first floor was not a particularly welcome one.

John Smith sat at his desk, preening at himself in a little mirror. He was adjusting his hair anxiously, as if trying to hide exactly what it had gone through the night before. “Morning,” Ianto greeted him grumpily.

John jumped back in his chair, stashing the mirror behind his back awkwardly. “M-morning,” he stammered back.

”So. Last night?” pressed Ianto. 

"I don’t know what you’re talking about. Noth…noth…nothing happened last night!" John stuttered, unable to find his voice. 

"You were just a little bit drunk," deadpanned Ianto. "So, you got home all right?"

"I - I don’t remember. I woke up in my…my own bed, so I guess so?" ventured the shopowner, consciously feeling a red flush spreading up the back of his neck. 

"Good. That’s good. We were all  _so_  worried about you.”

"I’m fine. Really. But don’t you have work?" 

"Jack’s not here yet."

John gulped. 

"Yeah, he’s not here, and I don’t know what happened to him after last night, honestly, so I can’t really open up if I’m the only person here at all, can I?"

"I’m - I’m sure he’ll turn up!" squeaked John an octave too high, remembering all too well the fact that he’d left Jack in the shower, and god, in what a state. 

”Morning, boys!” Donna Noble announced breezily, strolling into the bookstore. 

"Not so  _loud!”_ John and Ianto moaned together, each clapping their hands over their ears. 

Donna made a face. “What happened to you lot last night, then?”

"Absolutely nothing, nothing at all," John blurted out far too quickly. 

Ianto regarded him. He didn’t have anything against John, not personally, but he was hungover and depressed and angry, so the high road was long forgotten. Turning to Donna, he announced, “John got drunk and slept with Jack!” before dashing up to Torchwood Coffee.

“ _Smith!_ " Ianto could hear the distinct sound of Donna smacking John on the arm and smirked. "You did  _what?”_

"Me, it would seem," Jack’s lazy voice came from the entrance of the building. John blanched, while Jack just winked at him. "How much time did you spend getting your hair to look like that again?" the barista inquired. "I did a pretty good job messing it up." He sounded distinctly pleased with himself. 

”I have no clue what you’re talking about,” John said, glancing wildly about the room. “That must have been one  _crazy_ dream you had last night…”

"Not sure how I could’ve had a crazy dream when I got no sleep. And the only thing crazy about last night was  _you_ , John.” Jack caught John’s warning glance and chose to ignore it. “And wow,” he added, winking at Donna, “he is  _flexible_.”

John glowered. “You said you’d be discreet!” he hissed, hopefully out of Donna’s earshot. 

"What’s the point doing something like this - like  _you_  - if I can’t gloat a bit, huh?”

"Fuck you."

"Oh, but you  _did_.” Jack looked inordinately pleased. “And it’s not like you didn’t like it or anything, right?”

"My enjoyment is irrelevant to the situation," grumbled John. "And I suggest you go find Ianto and do some damage control."

”Ianto?” Jack frowned, shrugging out of his omnipresent grey-blue coat. “What about him?” John just pointed upstairs, a faint smile on his face, pleased that the barista would become someone else’s problem. Jack, looking slightly worried, headed up the stairs.

“ _Jack?”_ Donna mouthed incredulously after he was out of sight. John just buried his head in his hands, groaning. (And not the good kind of groaning, like he had done the night before).

Gwen strolled in, glanced at John, shot an  _I don’t want to know, do I_ _?_ look at Donna, who shook her head, and went upstairs, soon followed by Tosh. 

A particularly zombie-ish Rose Tyler was the next to arrive. She greeted Donna and took in John with a tired glance. “You look how I feel,” she muttered, collapsing into a chair. 

"Too much to drink, too?" Donna asked, not unsympathetically.

Rose considered it. “No, I don’t actually think I had  _anything_ to drink last night.”

John raised his head to look at her. “You were at the bar for at least an hour.”

”I was drunk on Clara. Nothing more,” sighed Rose, more dreamily than expected solely for John’s benefit. 

"At least  _you_  had a good night, then,” John grumbled, blearily gazing at a copy of Gatsby on the counter that seemed to be mocking him. “Shut up, you’ve done worse!” he cried incongruously. 

"What, me?"

"No, Rose Tyler, I was talking to Fitzgerald.  _Bastard_.” 

"You’re mad at Jack; don’t take it out on the book."

John’s eyebrows lowered angrily. “Jack Harkness is a horrible human being, and I’m sure he’d be really crappy in bed if I ever lost my senses enough to sleep with him!” 

"Don’t keep denying it," Donna laughed. "No use."

” _I_   _didn’t sleep with him!”_ John insisted stubbornly. “And who would want to, with his cocky demeanor and his endless innuendo and his painfully-chiseled abs…” His voice trailed off when he realized just what he had said and noticed Donna and Rose staring at him incredulously. “I’m going to go work,” he told his feet, too red to look at either of the women, and grabbed a stack of books to shelve.

Donna just shook her head at Rose, but the blonde was watching after John rather forlornly. The other employee nudged her in the shoulder, and she snapped back. “What was that?” Donna hissed.

"Nothing." Rose shrugged nonchalantly. "It’s just…"

"Just what?" Donna hissed.

The other woman sighed. “Clara and I got into this fight last night, and I just need to think about… stuff.  _John_ stuff.” Donna’s eyebrows shot to the top of her head. “She reckons I fancy him, you know.”

Donna rolled her eyes. “ _Everyone_ reckons that.” 

"Does it really come off that way?" She paused to consider this. "I don’t mean for it to, though!"

Donna rolled her eyes heavenwards and sighed. 

"No, I don’t fancy him! I’m perfectly happy with Clara, you have no idea  _how_  happy - I just…just don’t like when John’s around anyone else because I know he liked me, he  _really_  liked me, and it could be me instead of Jack or whoever and oh my god I fancy him,” she finished in a breathless rush. “Please don’t tell anyone!”

"Lips are sealed," assured Donna, trying not to look like she enjoyed this as much as she actually did. 

"Oh, god. Well at least now that I know I fancy him, I can start to un-fancy him and not be in denial…un-fancy isn’t a word, damn - "

As Rose was running her mouth off downstairs, he-with-the-painfully-chiseled-abs was laughing his head off upstairs, having heard what John said about his painfully-chiseled abs through the ceiling. 

"I’m glad you’re finding this funny," grumbled Ianto, decidedly not looking Jack in the eye. 

"Look, Ianto - " began Jack for the sixth time.

"I don’t want to hear it! It’s fine, okay?"

"No, Ianto, just let me finish. Don’t listen if you don’t want to. So John - John Smith has quite possibly the most fantastic hips I’ve ever seen. Better than yours. They do this thing when he’s really getting into it - "

"Fantastic. I hope you’re happy together."

"Shut up, Ianto! The thing is, yeah, John has better hips than you, but I don’t give a fuck about hipbones. I came back up here for a reason."

Ianto waited for him to elaborate, but Jack couldn’t seem to find the words. 

”I- I-” Jack stammered. Ianto raised his eyebrows in curiosity. “I-“  _Fuck._ He was always full of snarky comments to inject in any sort of situation where there was a lull in conversation, but the moment he had to actually discuss his relationship like an adult, he floundered. 

"You can’t keep me in suspense," Ianto remarked amusedly. 

Gwen rolled her eyes from the other side of the floor. “This is a coffee shop, not a bloody  _soap opera_ ,” she muttered. Tosh downstairs just laughed, not buying it. 

Jack looked wildly between the women and Ianto, then did what any mature adult would do in the situation, what had been happening an unfortunate amount in the building for the last week or so. 

He ran out of the shop.

Rose and Donna regarded him as he dashed out onto the sidewalk, trying to suppress their laughter. “Didn’t think he’d be one to resort to that,” Donna commented. 

"Happens to all of us sooner or later." Rose gave a little shrug, thinking despondently about the  _first_ time she and Clara had fought and the brunette had run out.

Donna rolled her eyes. “Cheerful, all of you.”

John walked back from around a display of romance novels. “Did Jack just run out?” The women nodded in affirmation, and he frowned. “Why?”

"Ianto’s mad at him," Donna explained. John still looked confused.

"Because you  _slept with his boyfriend last night,_ " Rose added, probably more cuttingly than was absolutely necessary.

”They weren’t exclusive!” exclaimed John in horror, before succumbing to a coughing fit. “I mean, that would be relevant if I ever slept with Jack, which I didn’t.”

Given that this was his fifth denial in as many minutes, or so it seemed, nobody even bothered to accuse him again. 

Just then, Owen stumbled in, looking vaguely harried. “What did you lot even do? Jack actually bumped into me. Like literally. We both fell over. And he didn’t even make any crass comment on the fact that he was on top of me for about twenty seconds, so something must’ve been up.”

"John slept with Jack last night - " began Rose.

"Oh, come on, don’t word it like that! Jack slept with me - " he broke off and fumbled " - would be the better way to word it considering such a thing actually happened."

Owen burst into hysterical laughter. “Must be dreaming. I need a coffee.”

"It’ll be salty," warned Gwen from upstairs. "Ianto’s flavoring it with his own tears."

"Am not!" came a choked cry in angry response. 

Donna, Rose, and Owen shook their heads disapprovingly at John. “I didn’t do it!” he shrieked in yet another pointless defense.

Owen tutted in mock-chastisement. “ _It_ has a name, you know.” The shop owner let out a frustrated scream.

Rose laughed and stood. “I’m going to get a cup of tea,” she announced, pointing upwards.

"You’re working," John reminded her crabbily.

She glanced around the customer-less shop, before she went up to the coffee shop, dryly replied, “I’ll trust you to keep everything down here under control.”

Owen waved to the other two. “Should probably be getting up, too.” He made a face. “It’s going to be so  _quiet_ without Jack.”

John and Donna sat in silence for a few minutes, with John broodingly contemplating  _Gatsby._ "Hello!" a chipper voice came after a while, breaking the silence. Clara Oswald smiled at both of them.

"Don’t you teach?" John asked, making no effort to disguise his grumpy demeanor. 

"It’s Sunday," she reminded him, the happy look fast-disappearing from her face.

Donna sent him a scathing look. “Rose is upstairs,” she informed the other woman. 

”Gotcha,” chirped back Clara, running up the stairs two at a time. “Wait, John?” she suddenly asked, turning around halfway to the top. 

"What?" he growled back, more of an accusation than a question. 

"Amy said something about a hot date last night - "

John threw Gatsby in her general direction, but his aim was so lousy it didn’t even hit the stairs. 

"I…take it the thing with Jack went badly then."

"No, it was  _fantastic_!” called Ianto from upstairs. “Abso-bloody-lutely fantastic. Because John has these stupid fucking gorgeous hipbones, see - “

"I’m going to get a noiseproofed ceiling one of these days," John muttered to nobody in particular. 

"God  _damn_ ,” sighed Tosh. “I’m going up too. Owen and Ianto are going to come to blows - “

"Are not!"

" -  _because Owen doesn’t get any work done anyways_  - “

"Liar!" Owen shouted back affrontedly. 

Rose grinned and jumped up from her chair as soon as Clara reached Torchwood. She placed a solid hello kiss on the brunette’s lips, utterly determined to erase any feelings for John Smith that may have still been lingering. “Still mad at me?” she asked when they broke apart. 

Clara considered this, attempting to stay rational while taking in Rose Tyler’s wide, pleading hazel eyes. “No,” she admitted, trying to keep her face at least  _somewhat_ stern when a smile was sneaking on it. The blonde squealed, satisfied, and grabbed Clara’s hand, leading her over to the table where she was sitting. 

"Young love," Ianto whimpered mournfully into his mug. Just to spite him, Owen wrapped his arms around Tosh’s waist and placed a kiss on her temple. Ianto groaned loudly. 

Gwen just wondered when her shop had gotten so  _emotional._

Back downstairs, Jack stepped back into the building, heard Ianto’s wailing, and walked back out immediately. Donna and John just shook their heads at one another. 

”Someone’s going after him,” said Donna resolutely. “Someone who’s not me, because I actually have a job to do.”

John took three steps back and hit a shelf.

"Not you, you idiotic stick insect! You’ll make it so much worse!"

"Send the boyfriend," sighed John with relief. 

"No! Let him rot, for all I care! Let him fucking rot in a fucking garbage can - " shrieked Ianto.

"I’ll go," cried Gwen suddenly. "I think I know him better than any of you, really - "

Tosh rolled her eyes.

“ _Don’t leave me!_ " Ianto wailed, effectively stopping a snarky remark from either Toshiko or Owen. 

"Fine. Rose? Clara?" Gwen inquired.

"We - " whispered Clara softly as she swung over from the chair to the tabletop and leaned forwards just enough to slip the right sleeve of Rose’s blouse from her shoulder, " - are so,  _so_  out of commission.”

"We’ll go," said Tosh finally, apparently speaking for both herself and Owen.

"Fuck, no!" responded Owen, scandalized. "What’s in it for me? He’ll throw a hissy fit on the doorstep and I do  _not_  want to see that.” 

“ _Fine._ " Donna sighed, beleaguered **.**  ”I’ll do it.”

John eyed her apprehensively. Eager though he might have been to brush off the responsibility on someone else, he couldn’t picture that ending well. “Are you sure that’s the best idea?”

She scowled back at him. “D’ _you_  want to do it, book boy?”

"No!" he cried, looking as frightened as a child being disciplined. 

She rose. “Wish me luck, then.” John waved as she departed the shop, then sat back in his chair.  _He was alone._  Sure, there was still the group congregated in the shop upstairs, but as for the bookstore, he had it all to himself - no chatter or giggling or gossiping about John’s love life. It was a beautiful moment. He closed his eyes, taking it in.

And then Rory and Martha walked in, and the beauty was shattered. 

"Hey," Martha called. Her companion glanced apprehensively around the shop, as if making sure that Amy wasn’t there - even though of  _course_ he knew that she only worked afternoons, one to five…not as if he had memorized her work schedule, though. 

John waved at them distractedly, then hit upon the idea to kick both of them out. “Guys, can you run out and find Jack? He and Ianto had a huge row, and - “

"No, they  _didn’t_!” cried Martha in shock. “ _They_  couldn’t!” She unceremoniously dumped her bag on a chair and bolted out the door. 

"Why?" asked Rory.

_Damn him. Stupid Rory, logical Rory, killjoy Rory._

"Beats me," John ventured after a long pause. "But you should probably go because someone needs to be Donna’s damage control - "

"Jack’s never liked me," said Rory bluntly. "I’ll stay."

"Oh."

"Are you sure you don’t know what’s the matter?" Rory pushed. "Ianto  _never_  gets mad - “

"No!"

Just then, Owen inconveniently poked his head over the banister. “Rory, Rory,  _Rory_. Have I got a story for you. A tragic tale of love, loss, and betrayal - available at your local bookstore today,” he said in a purposely macabre voice.

John's eyes widened in panic. "Fuck you, Harper! Someone fire him!"

"And Martha’s getting Jack’s side of things," Rory reasoned, "so we could  _actually_  write this book, huh?”

"You’re so much more articulate when Amy’s not in the room," responded Owen delightedly. "So, anyways, you know what John did?"

"Owen, no! Tosh, can you put him on a leash?" groaned John. 

Tosh was presumably laughing her head off upstairs and didn’t answer. 

Rory glanced eagerly between Owen and John. “What is it?”

Owen’s lips twisted up in a smirk. “John and Jack  _slept together_ last night.” The med student’s hysterical laughter was almost inaudible above Ianto and John’s mutual groans. 

"And just how much alcohol was involved?" Rory asked, grinning as he took a seat, his textbooks spilling onto the table in front of him. 

"Too much," John grumbled, rubbing his temples. 

"You didn’t need alcohol, your  _magical_ hipbones probably did all the work!” Ianto called down spitefully. 

John glanced down at his hips in bewilderment. “Magical?” he mouthed to Owen and Rory. The other men just shook their heads, trying to keep from bursting out into laughter. “You’re the only ones who understand me,” he informed Beatrice and Benedick the spiders sadly as they went at it in their little glass jar. 

Amy Pond glided into the shop. “Hello!” she called brightly to everyone in general, not hungover or upset or remotely embarrassed from the night before. Rory, losing any nonchalance he may have possessed in the last few minutes, went red and stuck his face inside a neuroscience book.

"You’re not supposed to be in work for another five hours, Pond," John informed her, dreading the idea of having yet  _another_ person around to taunt him.

She ruffled his hair, which had previously been so meticulously groomed. “Yeah, but I wanted to make sure you made it through the night okay. That you made it through  _Jack_ okay.”

”Oh, he made it through Jack okay, all right,” answered Ianto bitterly. “ _All the way_  through. Because Jack fucking Harkness - “

"You should talk to him, Ianto!" said Amy sympathetically. "He won’t know how you feel - "

" - if you keep being a snarky, whiny bastard - " continued Owen, shoving Rory in the shoulder. "I mean, better than silently worshiping the ground your so-called true love walks on - "

Rory said nothing. 

"But John,  _are_  you okay?” inquired Amy concernedly. “It’s been a bad week for you, huh - “

"Can everyone shut up about any hypothetical sex I may or may not have had! My head is pounding and I regret everything, including this hypothetical sex - and I do not have magical hipbones! And whatever hipbones I do have, they really fucking hurt - "

Owen coughed as discreetly as Owen could cough, which was not very discreetly at all. 

"Get out or I’ll throw the spiders at you!" Amy warned Owen while John shrieked in defense of his beloved copulating arachnids. 

"Fine, fine - those things are terrifying" said Owen, backing away.

"Just tell me when Martha comes back, will you?" John called while running up the stairs to the security of Tosh (the greatest defense against Owen Harper imaginable) and the strongest coffee he could get his hands on.

Clara and Rose glanced at each other inadvertently, remembering what their fight the night before had been  _about_ \- the unfortunate subject of John and Martha - before quickly looking back to their drinks. 

"Ooh, John!" Amy called, bounding up the stairs behind him. "I forgot to tell you what happened with your dating profile." 

After taking a long gulp of the enormous mug of coffee Tosh had sympathetically pushed his way, John looked back at Amy. “What?” he asked suspiciously. 

"You have a match!" she crooned. 

He eyed her warily. “Why do you sound so  _pleased_ with yourself?”

She pouted. “I thought you’d be pleased! She’s not Jack, after all.”

"Go ahead, then," he told her resolvedly, making determined plans to drown himself in coffee later. 

The two women sitting together made a concentrated effort  _not_ to make eye contact; instead, Rose suddenly started playing with her nails and Clara found a bit of the wall to be particularly interesting. 

"The site paired you up with Martha!" Amy beamed. 

"Martha? No!” cried Owen before John could say anything at all. “That would be a bloody nightmare - for both of you, I mean.”

Tosh didn’t react, as Tosh had honestly expected Owen to reveal something along those lines _ages ago_.

"We…we wouldn’t…suit," said John once he’d found his voice, wincing at the fact that ‘wouldn’t suit’ sounded too eighteenth-century for words. 

Rose swallowed miserably. “I think it’s cute,” she affirmed. “Very cute.” She glanced at Clara with eyes that hopefully didn’t give away her lie.

"You’re  _trying_ ,” whispered the teacher with wondering comfort. “That’s…thank you.” Clara kissed Rose on the forehead briefly, and it was very nearly worth it. 

"Cute? No!" John exclaimed with horror. "Martha’s a...good person, smartest person I know - but a  _date_?”

"I don’t like it," muttered Rory. For one thing, it wasn’t fair that  _she_  got the man of her dreams before Amy even spared him a second glance. And for the another thing -  _well_. ”You know what?” he said, standing up and looking John square in the eye. “You break her heart - and you  _will_  break her heart, I know you - and I am going to tear you limb from limb from limb from limb.”

"I don’t think…" began Amy, trying to defend John, before trailing off into shocked silence.

The threat really shouldn’t have been a particularly intimidating one - Rory was talking to a man with a good few inches on him, after all, and he was so terribly scrawny (well, to be fair, they  _both_ were) - but in the moment, he had such a fiercely possessive look on his face that it was hard not to take him seriously. Amy eyed him with a new respect. 

"I won’t break her heart," John informed him plainly, "because I’m not going out on a date with her." 

"Jesus  _Christ,_ " Ianto grumbled.

Rose swallowed down an increasing lump in her throat. “Why not?” she asked. “You’re single, she’s single, it might get everyone to shut up about Jack…” Clara squeezed her hand.

A brief moment of pain flashed through John’s eyes - of anyone in the shop, he would have expected Rose to be on his side in this mad battle - but it disappeared just as quickly. “This isn’t a discussion,” he told them simply, and walked back down the stairs. After all, if he  _were_ to ask Martha out (which of course wouldn’t happen because it was foolish and ludicrous and she was  _Martha_ ), he wouldn’t allow the rest of the staff to dissect everything that could possibly go wrong with their potential relationship first. 

See, going out with someone else in the shop was a literal nightmare.  _Because everyone knew everything_. Jack and Ianto hadn’t really had to deal with it before today, but it'd been a horrific mess for Tosh and Owen. There was that one time…John shivered. No use thinking about that now. 

Besides, he was the  _owner;_ everything he did was even more gossip-worthy than normal. That thing with the Master, his crush on Rose Tyler, and now this Jack fiasco which totally did not happen. (Yeah, it was fantastic from an objective point of view, but  _it did not happen_.) 

But basically, dating in the workplace was something that John was not going to go through, least of all with Martha Jones. Because she deserved better - she was selfless and patient and right now she was probably dragging a kicking and screaming Jack Harkness back to the shop.

Also the fact that Martha had a thing for him really fucking scared him because John was not someone who was worth blind love. 

"I won’t do it and you can’t make me," said John to the general populace, because really, going on a date with Martha would be a terrible, terrible idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final update for today~ So from now on we can continue adding things /as soon as/ they're posted on tumblr!
> 
> Feel free to comment so we don't look like losers and/or say hi to either me (dawidtennant) or doctorwhat on tumblr - we basically are willing to explore characters and ships based on popular demand - John/Jack wasn't even our own idea. So yeah, suggest anything and we'll totally work with it; this is pretty much a soap opera after all.


	7. Jane Eyre

The bells on the door downstairs chimed yet again and a few moments later, Martha and Donna, each holding one ear, dragged Jack up the stairs. “We got him,” Donna announced grimly, releasing the ear she had her grip on. Ianto sat back, arms crossed, determined to focus just about anywhere but Jack’s face. 

 John turned to Martha and opened and closed his mouth several times, tragically resembling a fish. Everyone else’s eyes flickered between the two of them, waiting for John to just  _say something already._

"Yes?" She cocked her head to the side curiously. "John?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, taking another long slurp of his coffee - his new best friend. Everyone who had been present for the previous conversation just rolled their eyes. He turned and went back down the stairs, Donna, Martha, and Rory close behind.

"Hey." Amy caught Rory’s arm before he could descend. "Can I talk to you?"

His eyes widened, and his mind went blank, losing any possible excuses he might have thought of when  _not_ affected by her presence. “I - um -“  _Shit. “_ Sure.”

They took a quiet corner to themselves - not difficult, when Jack and Ianto were in the middle of simultaneously yelling and making out with each other; Owen and Tosh were doing the same, minus the yelling; and Clara and Rose, slightly more discreet, were having copious amounts of eye sex. 

"I wanted to say…" Amy looked supremely uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Sorry. You know, for yesterday."

In some alternate timeline somewhere, Rory deadpanned, “Wait - what happened yesterday again? Was that when you made me bribe forty med school students to show up here for no good reason? Was that when you told me in detail exactly what you’d do to a fucking fictional starship captain as if I’d care? Oh, yeah, it was when you called me gay like a blindly ignorant and quite frankly offensive _child_!”

In another alternate timeline - at least Rory hoped - Amy sealed her apology with a kiss. A deep, sensual kiss with her hands  _so_  tight on his shoulders and - oh, he was getting carried away. 

In this timeline, however, Rory weakly claimed, “It’s fine, Amy. It’s  _always_  fine.”

"No!" cried Amy. "It’s not! Why, Rory,  _why_  don’t you call me out on my crap? I’m flying blind here!”

"Erm…"

"You can threaten to tear John’s arms from his sockets - what makes _me_ any different?"

"True that," responded Owen, briefly breaking his lips from Tosh’s. "You both have really great hair, but…see, the thing is…"

"Owen, shut up!" Rory breathed hoarsely, his head buried in his hands.

”Rory?” A deep crease formed between Amy’s brows. “What is it? What’s wrong?” 

His chest heaved up and down in an effort to find words. “I…I lo-” Before he could finish his sentence though, John’s ill-tempered voice came ringing up from downstairs.

"Amy, you have visitors!"

Rory let out a long sigh, grateful for the interruption. The Scot glanced at him, still looking worried, but instantly brightened when she saw who it was. “Hello, sweetie!” a woman’s smooth voice came ringing from behind the med student. 

"River!" Amy exclaimed happily. Rory turned to see her hugging a visitor, whose hair very nearly seemed to have a personality of its own. A man with his own hair perfectly coiffed who was dressed in a professor-like combination of a tweed jacket and bow tie, trailed the woman called River. Amy turned to hug him, as well. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, we’ve never come to see you at work," River told her in that insanely alluring voice of hers. 

Amy frowned at the use of the word ‘work’ - it was a foreign concept to anyone in the bookstore except John - but let it go. 

”No, I mean, what are you doing  _here_?” Amy repeated with vague hand gestures. “I mean, it’s been a  _year…_ " she trailed off, remembering there were indeed other people in the room. "Oh, Rory, sorry - you were saying something?"

Rory glanced between the three young people, presumably friends from way,  _way_  back. And god, they seemed to belong together in some strange, wild, adventurous way - like they were in a world which Rory Williams could never enter. And it wasn’t just River, with her gorgeous coffee-colored skin and dark hair and the way her elbow rested easily on Amy’s shoulder. The bow-tied man too, he had this devil-may-care air that made Rory _incredibly_ uneasy. “No,” said Rory finally. “You go on.”

"Oh, good!" blurted Amy. "Guys, this is River Song, also known as my partner in crime, and her boyfriend." 

Rory relaxed infinitesimally. 

"They’ve been roaming the world for like an eternity and neither of them bothered to use cell phones  _ever_  - ” continued Amy until River cut her off.

"Boyfriend?" she laughed. "Nah, we were in Vegas for a bit, and one thing led to another…"

Amy shrieked. “No, you  _didn’t!_ Mrs. John Smith; I can’t believe it!” 

The original John Smith turned to the bow-tied man with eyes as wide as saucers. 

River just shook her head.

“Right, sorry,” Amy corrected. “ _He’s_ Mr. River Song.” 

Rory’s face pinched in confusion - a man with possibly the most commonplace name on Earth married to, well, a woman named  _River Song._  He wasn’t the only one a little lost; John the bookstore owner was staring at his name double in bemusement.

"Oi!" the new John cried out. "I am not  _Mr. River Song_.” He scoffed at the idea.

Amy just shook her head. “Yes, you are.”

"Actually," River spoke up, "the  _former_ Mr. River Song.”

Her friend gasped. “You two split up?  _When_?”

River glanced back at John. “When did we get the divorce finalized, sweetie?”

He had to think about this for a moment, not being particularly good with time. “December before last,” he decided finally. 

"You two got married and then divorced  _two years ago_ and you never thought to tell me?!” Amy shrieked. “Good to know your fashion sense hasn’t changed at least,” she conceded, taking in the new John’s attire.

"Bow ties are cool," he informed her defensively. He was met with titters from around the shop.

”I can’t believe you!” interrupted Amy. “The last time you called me was a year ago, and you didn’t mention the marriage  _or_  the divorce - “

"Granted," said River, "we were sharing a payphone booth with a jewel thief running from the police, so we couldn’t say much at all."

Amy shook her head sadly, not particularly nonplussed. “Still.”

"You know what?" cut in Ianto. "I want to know how _you_ managed being stuck for two years with an ex! It must have been really fucking hard being forced to put up with someone who pretends to give a shit about you when really, all they want is hipbones!"

“ _Please_  shut up about the hipbones,” groaned the original John.

"Hm…" mused River. "The sex was fantastic; that might’ve been it."

Jack perked up, looking considerably more delighted than he had all day. “See, Ianto?”

Ianto glared and sank deeper into his chair.

River floated over and ruffled his hair comfortingly. “Hey, Ianto, was it? You don’t need  _him_  - John and I aren’t exclusive or anything.”

"I’ve had it with non-exclusive things!" cried Ianto uncharacteristically loudly. "The next time I hear the word ‘exclusive’ I’m going to scream!"

"You already are," responded Jack with a wink. "And besides,  _I_  already know you’re a screamer - “

"Can you ever  _not_  diffuse tension with innuendo! God, I don’t know how I put up with you so long!” 

His sort-of-boyfriend-sort-of-not recoiled, a stung look crossing his face. Jack Harkness was a master at hiding his feelings, of filling any situation with effortless insinuations and natural charisma, but even his abilities had their limits in the face of Ianto’s… well, whatever this was. 

John the first briefly glanced over to him, feeling an odd sense of guilt. It wasn’t as if Jack was an innocent party - John was sure Jack had  _way_ more sex with him than he had with Jack - but John was still culpable, at least to some degree. A long moment of silence filled the room.

"So," Clara said finally, trying to make her tone as bright as possible, "where do you three know each other from?"

"River and I went to school together," Amy explained, though her tone was decidedly cooler than it had been a few minutes earlier. "Those two met in a library."

Owen snorted. “Romantic,” he commented under his breath, oblivious to the fact that all the other couples in the room - including the one he was a part of - had met in or above a  _bookstore_ _._ Tosh shot him a reproving look, not blind to the irony. 

”We met  _outside_  a bookstore,” Owen pointed out. “I saved your life.”

"You stepped on my foot, broke my nail, gave me a bandage, and then left me to rot there," responded Tosh, rolling her eyes. 

"I did  _not_  hear it that way,” cried Martha, shoving Owen with her shoulder. “Liar! Knight in shining armor, my arse.”

"You trust  _her_  over me?” Owen reproved, mock-offended.

"Chemistry," mused River out loud to nobody in particular. "I  _like_  it.”

Tosh froze up slightly.

"No, no, all  _three_  of you.” River said this last in a conspiratorial whisper and Tosh froze up even more.

"So, a bookstore, huh?" bowtied-John said conversationally to John, who nodded distractedly, still immensely regretting the drunk sex and sober sex and god, the shower sex with Jack - but not regretting it enough to apologize. 

"You sell a lot? It seems pretty crowded…"

"They all work here," said John stiffly. " _All_  of them, practically.”

The walking bow tie seemed conscious that he’d hit a nerve, and  _smirked_. 

The bookstore-owning John stiffened and briefly considered throwing an insult in about his name counterpart having nothing better to do than hang out with his  _ex-wife,_ but quickly realized that it wouldn’t seem like much of an insult coming from a man about as far from a relationship as possible.

Speaking of which…

He made his way past the other John and over to Martha Jones, who was sipping some tea and watching the scene unfold. If he  _were_ to ask her out, this would be his best possible opportunity, when everyone else was enraptured in the new visitors and all the drama they had spurred.

"Hey," Martha said to him easily.

"H-hey," he stammered back.  _Shit._ This was not going to go well if he couldn’t so much as greet her without acting like a complete idiot. 

She frowned. “Are you alright?”

He was going to do this, going to ask Martha on a date. Because he just wanted everyone to shut up about The Jack Thing (partially for his own feelings, partially for Ianto’s, since he  _really_ didn’t have anything against the barista, despite being too embarrassed to apologize to him).

But, oh, Martha Jones deserved  _so much better._

Rory was sidling over to them with an expression of undisguised alarm on his face, moving slowly to avoid attracting the attention and comments of one River Song.

Basically, if John wanted to do something, he should do it now - because he was certain Rory would follow through on the threat of dismemberment. 

"So. Martha…" he began awkwardly.

“ _Are_  you alright?” she repeated with concern; then left him no time to respond. She immediately grasped his wrist with the fingers that weren’t clutching her teacup. “Pulse is elevated, and you look a bit clammy.” 

"Oh?"

"Yeah." She came to her senses with a sudden flush and dropped his hand as if it was poisonous. 

"I…I think I’m going to get some air."

"Probably should."

Rory was three seconds away from being in punching distance. 

"You should go out with me!" whispered John hurriedly. "No, wait, I mean  _outside_  out. Like, in case I faint.”

Martha had no time to utter any objections (not that she _had_ any) before John took her hand again and pulled her out the door and around the corner. 

Rory would have followed except on his way out, he tripped over Ianto’s outstretched foot. Which was  _definitely_ accidental. 

And the unmistakable smirk plastered on Ianto’s face after Rory fell flat on his face was decidedly an unfortunate coincidence.

"Oh my God!" Amy cried, seeing Rory’s hapless fall. She bit down  _hard_ on her lower lip for a moment, because she absolutely did not want to snicker at the student. “Are you alright?”

"Fine," Rory grumbled as he stood up again, trying to gather his dignity from where it lay in shards on the ground in front of Ianto’s feet. Amy rubbed his arm comfortingly, and the room in general just winced.

Outside, Martha was doing her very best not to gawk at John (who, in all fairness, was rather prone to gawking himself). “You’re  _asking me out_?” she demanded incredulously, dragging every word out to emphasize how foreign she found the concept.

"Well." John ran a hand through his hair, making it very nearly stand up with a life of its own. "Yes. I mean,  _no!_ It’s just dinner.”

"That’s a date, John," Martha laughed.

This was downright painful, John mused - it had been a dreadfully long time since he had asked  _any_ girl out, and it showed, badly. ”Right, well, I’m asking you out, then.” 

”No!” cried Martha spontaneously. “No. I…can’t.”

"Did I just get rejected?" asked John rhetorically. "I thought you _fancied_ \- "

"Yes!" Martha interrupted, not wanting to hear how that sentence was going to end because of the overwhelming sense of finality. If nobody  _said_  it, then maybe, just maybe, she was a sensible academically-oriented future doctor without a horrifically strong crush on a certain John Smith. “What even makes you use the word ‘thought’ - I was even more blatant than Rory!”

"Well…" mused John comfortingly. "Nah.  _I_  didn’t see it.”

Martha smiled wanly. “No…it’s just…you’ll never see me in that way, so I’m not going to bother. If it’s alright with you, I think I’m going back inside.”

"Wait! Think of it as a match of convenience or something!" blurted John on a whim. "I get to get rid of the Jack stigma and you get  _me_  for a few days.”

Martha pulled a face.

"God, that sounds vaguely...unsavory."

“ _Definitely_  not worth it,” giggled Martha into her hand, looking up at him with shining eyes. 

"And the height difference would be a problem…"

"Tell me about it."

"I might squish you by mistake!"

"I’d like to see you try, Mr. Smith!"

They were standing toe-to-toe and his hair was beautiful and he was smirking that stupid goddamn smirk and Martha was conscious that this was a terribly bad idea. 

"At least let me get you some ice cream, Martha."

"It’s breakfast!"

"So what?"

"Deal."

"Well, then.” He grinned that  _stupid little grin_ of his and offered her his arm. “Shall we go, Martha Jones?”

She stared at him. “Wait, you were serious about leaving now?”

"Yeah." He nodded as if he couldn’t see anything wrong with that.

"In the middle of your work day?"

John looked back to the bookstore with raised eyebrows. “I think they can handle our hoard of customers,” he remarked dryly. Martha, having run out of any possible objections to this arrangement, willingly smiled, took his arm, and they were off.

Back inside, Rory paced around the upper floor anxiously. “They’ve been gone for a long time,” he muttered.

"Don’t worry, Martha’ll take good care of John," Clara assured him, earning a chuckle from Rose.

He glared at her. “I’m worried about  _her._ Sometimes, when you love someone for a long time, you build them up to be this… god in your head, when of course they’re only human.” His ramble was cut short by seeing a flash of Amy Pond’s brilliant hair in the corner of his eye. “Not all the time, though. But it’s Martha, definitely Martha, I’m scared for!” 

”That’s  _so_  sweet!” cried Amy effervescently, and was meant with blank stares around the room. “But if you like her, you really should tell her.”

"Yeah, Rory, tell her!" echoed Owen mockingly. 

"I’m absolutely serious, Rory," said Amy in a horrific attempt to be comforting. "Just go run after Martha and tell her."

"I…I don’t…"

"You’re best friends; it’s only natural," reasoned the redhead. "I don’t blame you one bit."

"But - "

River cut in, “Amy, sweetie, I’ve been here less than five minutes, and even I can see - “

Jack clapped a hand over her mouth. “We don’t talk about it.”

"Oh?" asked River, arching an eyebrow; Jack winked and didn’t remove his hand. 

If Ianto could have sunk into the floor or retreated into the wall, he would’ve done so. Instead he stared crossly at his watch, because it must be broken - time was going  _so_  damn slowly. Which, to be quite honest, outright sucked, because his stopwatch never lied. 

The bowtie-clad John glanced from River and Jack to Amy and Rory, utterly and completely baffled as to why everyone was acting so very  _strangely._ He frowned, rewinding the conversation in his mind and trying to figure out just what was going on.

And then something clicked.

"Oh!" he gasped. " _I_ get it! Rory here has a thing” - he winked, as if to convey just what the word “thing” met in his context - “for our Amelia.”

The room went dead-quiet.

John just grinned and nodded, happy to finally understand a social situation involving romance. It was a rare occasion, but a proud one. “He probably even wants to take her out for…texting and…scones!”

"What?" Amy laughed. "Rory can’t have a  _thing_ for me, he’s… well… he’s Rory!” She looked around the room like she was seeking support in this from her colleagues, but they had all taken sudden interest in their feet and didn’t seem able to establish eye contact with her. “Right?” She sounded less and less sure of herself. “Rory?”

”Yes!” Owen blurted suddenly, because this new John Smith had no right to steal his line. Because Owen was going to be the one to spill the beans, that was a given - and he was going to do it at the right moment, which this was _not_. “Rory has a thing for Amy; you must be psychic!”

"I…I…" began Rory, gaping miserably at the redhead.

"Yeah, and Rory’s thing for Amy is  _literal_. Like he literally has a thing for her.”

"I do?"

"Yeah!" cried Owen, making wild hand gestures behind Amy’s back. "Oh god, yeah, you do."

It took a few seconds for Rory’s panic-addled brain to catch on. “Amy, yes…yes, I do.”

"Is it an engagement ring?" asked John obliviously.

"Ooh," giggled Amy, not hearing him. "I like things!"

Rory slowly turned out his pockets and found nothing; Owen stared at him in dismay. Dismay and  _anger_ , because if Rory didn’t find something to give Amy and de-crisis-ify the situation, Owen was going to shove them in a closet and hope that they resolve the situation in the most primal way possible.

And that look on Owen’s face is why Rory gave Amy every last bit of money he had in his wallet, and racked his brains for an excuse. 

”I-it’s a thing,” he stammered numbly. “For you.”

River wrenched herself away from Jack and grabbed John’s arm. “We should really be leaving,” she informed the group smoothly, before darting out of there, dragging her ex-husband behind her.

Amy just stared at Rory, trying to make sense of the money that was now in her palm. “Oh!” she realized. “For when I picked up lunch last week.” She eyed him curiously. “I told you we were even when you bribed everyone to come here Thursday night.” Seeing Rory open and close his mouth several times, no adequate words in supply, she laughed. “I get it; a Williams always repays his debts.” 

For some reason, she felt an odd sense of disappointment, as if she had wanted Rory’s “thing” to be… well, a  _crush_ thing. But that was ridiculous. Because he was Rory. And Rory couldn’t have a crush on her, that would be plain ludicrous.

Right?

Everyone else fell strangely quiet, like they, too, had been waiting for the tension to  _finally_ be resolved (though, of course, their lives were far too amusing when Amy was ignorant).

The original John Smith and Martha were meanwhile staring at the darkened windows of a closed ice cream shop in dismay.

"It should be open! Why isn’t it open!"

"Normal people don’t have ice cream for breakfast; it’s not healthy - so frankly, I’m kind of relieved. I don’t know why I agreed to this - "

"Oh, Martha Jones, why don’t you  _live a little_!”

"Fine. Then let’s break in." Martha’s eyes flashed with a sense of deadly purpose.

John leaned weakly against the wall as he ran a hand through his hair in shock. “You’re not serious.”

"It’s a Sunday and I don’t have a criminal record yet."

“ _I_  do! Long story, but - “

"I like long stories."

"And you could hear it if we sat down at a nice little table in a nice little shop eating ice cream that we bought with our own money."

"Come on, John,  _live a little_.”

"I liked you better when you  _didn’t_  have a sense of humor,” grumbled John, sticking his tongue out at the shop window and marching off affrontedly down the street. 

Martha jogged to keep up with him; the difference between their leg lengths was terribly unfair. “Where are you going?” she laughed.

"Martha Jones," he said determinedly, turning to her while keeping up his impressive stride, "I will find the  _single_ shop in London that sells ice cream at breakfast time, even if it keeps me away from the store all day long.” He paused to consider this. “ _Especially_ if it keeps me away from the store all day long.”

She nodded knowingly. “You mean Jack?”

He pursed his lips together in a frown. “I mean Jack.”

She tried not to smirk  _too_ widely. “How did that happen, anyway? Too much alcohol?”

He rubbed his forehead. “ _So_ much alcohol.”

"Was he good?" Martha asked eagerly. "I mean, obviously he’d be  _good,_ but how good?”

John let out an indignant yelp. “I’m not talking about Jack Harkness in bed with you! I mean, if I slept with him,” he added hastily. “Which I definitely did  _not_.”

"Smooth," Martha commented dryly. He glared at her. 

”And besides, you’re assuming all the moves were his!” John added with an unconscious smirk, adjusting the shoulders of his trenchcoat. 

"The  _hypothetical_  moves, right?”

"Right," responded John, coming back to his senses. "If anything actually happened last night, for all you know, most of it  _could’ve_  been me.”

Martha stopped in her tracks to lean against a streetlamp and laugh hysterically.

John didn’t appear to notice. “Who said Harkness is a sex god anyway? He’s all  _talk_  - I mean, nobody can corroborate anything…’cept Ianto. And Ianto’s biased. Maybe Gwen? Owen’s hiding something, honestly -  _you_  would know if he was - Martha? Martha! There’s nothing funny about this!”

"Well…" she managed to reply through giggles, "you have got the landlord to back up your side of things. I mean, at least  _he_  seems to think you’re a sex god - “

"That - that was  _uncalled for_!”

She merely grinned; he wondered when (and why?) she’d started to open up. Or had he just not noticed all along?

John’s eyes widened, noticing a little dessert shop with a red awning across the street that, amazingly enough, appeared to  _actually be open_. “Come on!” he told her excitedly, grabbing her hand without thinking through the gesture and running to the shop. Martha swallowed once they reached their destination, taking in their joined hands. “Oh!” John dropped hers hastily, smiling a little apologetically. 

"Right." She let out a small sigh, trying not to make it  _too_ discernible - because John Smith’s hand, like John Smith himself, had a painfully alluring quality to it. “Let’s go get some ice cream, shall we?”

Back in the coffee shop, everything was oddly… quiet. Without John around to taunt, many of the employees were finding that they were suddenly devoid of their most beloved hobby. 

"So… what do we do now?" Jack asked awkwardly, breaking the silence.

"Oh, of  _course_ you don’t know what to do without  _him_ around,” Ianto groused. 

”I know  _who_  I want to do without John around,” shot back Jack with a pout, “except he doesn’t seem to want to be _done_.”

"Oh, so now I’m a second choice? No, not even that!"

"I’m pretty sure I slept with you first, and more _often_ \- " cried Jack with a roll of his eyes. 

"Clueless," muttered Rory under his breath; Amy blushed without knowing why the hell she was blushing and crossed her legs defensively. 

"River Song!" blurted Ianto, standing upright to eye Jack menacingly, which didn’t exactly work considering that his ‘angry’ look was undeniably close to his ‘bedroom eyes’ look. "River bloody Song!"

Jack eyed Ianto’s accusatory finger with an air of boredom. “Really? Her?”

"Her!"

"I flirt, Ianto! It’s my  _thing_! You never used to care!”

"You never used to tell me about other peoples’ hipbones!"

"They were nice hipbones; I thought you’d appreciate them!"

Ianto flipped the chair over at that. 

Meanwhile, upstairs, Clara slid off Rose’s lap with a light thump and managed to untangle their legs. “Did the apocalypse happen downstairs?”

"Do you  _really_  want to know?”

"Not particularly, no."

”How did you manage here all day without me?” Clara murmured, wrapping her arms around Rose’s neck.

"I can’t imagine," the blonde whispered back breathlessly, meeting Clara’s lips with hers - those lips were noless appetizing than they had been Friday night during the Great Star Trek Marathon.

Clara slid gracefully back  _onto_ Rose’s lap. “We should really,” she said softly between kisses, “go out tonight,  _just_  the two of us.”

"Mmmm," Rose hummed, "I sort of think I want to take everyone in the shop with us."

The brunette fell laughing into her shoulder. “We should, though,” she insisted. “We could go get dinner…I could show you my apartment; there’s this souffle recipe I’ve been  _dying_ to try out…”

Rose frowned. “Is that a euphemism?” If it was, she didn’t think that she was entirely opposed to whatever was, well, being euphemized.

Footsteps thumped up the stairs and Clara slipped back into her seat, positioning her hair so that it covered up a hickey she  _totally did not have_ because she was not the kind of woman who snogged her girlfriend in the empty floor above said girlfriend’s place of work.

Except perhaps on special occasions.

”Just me,” reassured Jack dismissively, as he found the two of them awkwardly staring anywhere but each other. “Keep doing whatever you were doing. God knows I don’t give a shit.”

The ghost of a smile flickered across Clara’s face; Rose shook her head, an unspoken  _no_  of warning. 

"Hey, I’m not going to hold this over your heads till you die or anything. I mean, young love, it’s great and all." He heaved a world-weary sigh as if he wasn’t anywhere near their age at all. "Go on, have fun, make out on my table. And then one of you will screw up, try to apologize, be fucking ostracized everywhere you go, and it’ll all evaporate like smoke."

Clara’s eyes widened in a vaguely horrified fashion; Rose squeezed her hand reassuringly. 

"Jack - " the blonde began, and was immediately shut down.

"Don’t want to hear it. Please, don’t stop kissing, and let me drown myself in coffee in peace."

"At least spike the coffee," added Clara lightly. "Or has alcohol done enough damage for one day?"

Jack’s left dimple twitched and then receded just as rapidly. “I’ll never get him back - hell, I don’t blame him. I’m a _spectacularly_  fucked up mess. Too fucked up to come crawling back.”

"Hm…" mused Rose, as Clara whispered, "Don’t you  _dare_  get involved!” under her breath. “We have souffles to make!”

"I can’t just leave him there," reasoned Rose. "Could you bear it?"

"Can’t we deal with him later?" Clara begged. "I mean, screw evening - we could go  _now._ Nobody’ll notice we’re gone, and we could make souffles, if you know what I mean -  ” She arched an eyebrow at Rose and bit her own lip softly.

"Yeah. Yes, let’s…" Rose started, suddenly feeling like the room had less oxygen than it should have. "We can jump out the window." 

"I like the way you think, Rose Tyler." Clara peeked to be sure that Jack wasn’t looking, then kissed her soundly again. And again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we've got in Eleven by popular demand. :D The bonus extra Amy/Rory and Rose/Clara is also by popular demand.
> 
> Basically, if you let us know who or what or who/who you want to see, we'll oblige. This is /completely/ up in the air for both of us~
> 
> And a reminder that we're writing this in paragraph-long chunks which means that there are likely a few continuity errors? If you notice that someone's upstairs and magically shows up downstairs or someone leaves and then suddenly shows up, please let us know. 
> 
> As always, comments are cried over and feel free to visit either or both of us on tumblr at dawidtennant and doctorwhat~


	8. The Scarlet Letter

Jack was alone in Torchwood by the time the other workers migrated upstairs again.

"Where did Clara and Rose go?" Tosh asked, glancing around. 

"Out there," Jack replied dejectedly, gesturing towards the propped-open window before looking back down at his mug of murky coffee because he was sure as  _hell_ done trying to talk to Ianto to fix things.

"Right." Gwen clapped her hands together. " _You_ two” - she, in turn, pointed to Jack and Ianto - “better play nice, or so help me…”

"Why?" the latter muttered.

"Because it’s almost ten on a Sunday, and we run a coffee shop, that, unlike John’s store, actually knows how to make a profit, and you two are  _not_  going to scare away our customers with whatever this is.” Both men nodded obstinately, still not initiating any kind of communication with the other. “Good, then.” Gwen sounded satisfied. “Bake some biscotti, will you?”

Jack briefly considered protesting - what worse disgrace was there than being forced to bake  _biscotti,_ of all things, with one’s ex? - but quickly decided against it because Gwen’s potential wrath was much worse than the alternative.

”I can handle this, you go do whatever - or whoever - it is you  _really_  want to do,” hissed Ianto as Gwen turned her back. 

"We broke up; it’s  _over_. No need to be bitter.”

"I’m not bitter! I just would rather not see your face unless absolutely necessary."

"It  _is_  necessary - Gwen said so!” argued Jack. 

"Since when do you listen to Cooper?"

"Since I stopped listening to you!" He uttered this last unreasonably loudly, and so vehemently that Gwen struck them both with a glare. 

"Yeah, you really did stop listening to me, because I don’t exactly remember ever saying that we broke up." Ianto’s tone was sharp enough to belie his words; Jack had to contemplate them for nearly a minute before opening his mouth in shock. 

"You - you - just said that you hated me!"

"True, but - "

"We _broke up_ , we did - you said - “

"When?"

Jack ran a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture he’d undoubtedly picked up from John. “Um…downstairs…right?” 

Ianto froze. “Jack, I  _never_ said I wanted to break up.”

"Never said you wanted to  _break up?_ You just told me you didn’t want to see my fucking face anymore!” Jack hissed back. Gwen sent the men a death glower, but they were too engaged in their conversation to notice.

"Yes, but I didn’t - I mean, I still -" 

"You know what?" Jack snapped. "Maybe the problem in this relationship isn’t me. Have you ever considered that you might be a little hard to deal with, too?"

A stricken look crossed Ianto’s face. “The hell do you mean?”

"I  _mean,_ you won’t bloody tell me what you’re thinking anymore.” Jack raised his hands. “And frankly, I don’t care. It’s over.” He turned away before he could see Ianto’s reaction and started to measure out the biscotti ingredients with a frightening force.

A stunned silence fell over Torchwood, no one quite knowing exactly what it was they were supposed to say in the situation. After a few stupefied moments, Ianto dropped the whisk he was holding, brushed past his co-workers, and ran down the stairs.

”Great, and now I’ve got a goddamn whisk on my toe and it hurts like fucking hell,” cried Jack irritably. “Asshole!” he called after Ianto, who turned around and maintained his composure enough to deliver a deathly calm, “And fuck you too,” back at him before slamming the door closed. 

"Oh, that’s fabulous," grumbled Gwen. "We’re one employee short and we’re going to be backlogged - "

"Nice going, Jack, I’m actually going to have to  _work_  today,” yawned Owen, stretching as he slid off his chair. “And I’m tired as fuck…nearly killed someone yesterday…terrifying, it was…not that you lot care…”

"How is this  _my_  fault! It’s Ianto’s - he makes  _no_  sense - at least  _I’m_  predictable!” Jack yelled to the room in general defensively. 

Meanwhile, Ianto had bumped into Rose and Clara outside against the side wall of the shop, lips and hands locked together tightly. 

"Ianto!" greeted Rose awkwardly, trying to disentangle her hair from Clara’s blouse buttons. "What  _happened_?”

“ _Jack_  broke up with  _me_. Go figure.”

"If you get involved on  _this_ end too,” said Clara under her breath, “well, just… _don’t_.”

Rose just shook her head - alright, so  _maybe_ she had a tendency to interfere  _just a little_ in other people’s relationships (it was a good hobby, okay?) - but she had learned earlier that morning that Jack and Ianto were far too, well,  _insane_ to remedy. “Don’t worry,” she whispered back to Clara. She gave Ianto an awkward, “I’m sorry.”

"Yeah," he muttered darkly in return.

"Can you all just leave work whenever you like?" Clara asked, shaking her head amusedly.

Rose shrugged. “Without John there, it’s like there’s no point for me, really.”

"Oh." Clara raised her eyebrows.

"Not - not like that! It just means I can run away and bake soufflés whenever I like." The blonde bumped her girlfriend lightly on the shoulder, before turning back to Ianto. "And Gwen’s not mad at you?"

"Shit." He winced. "I should really go back up, shouldn’t I?" Clara rubbed his shoulder supportively. He nodded to them, and headed back inside.

"Poor thing," Rose murmured, watching his slumped shoulders as he walked into the building again.

A moment later, John and Martha joined them, each inexplicably wielding an ice cream cone.

Rose and Clara gaped wordlessly. 

And then John  _spontaneously bent over to take a lick of Martha’s cone_ ; he nearly got some on his nose and she giggled madly without blushing at all. 

Rose rubbed her eyes violently, wondering if the pair of them would disappear like a mirage when she glanced up again. 

Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

"What  _happened_  to you?” asked Clara, eagerly directing her question to Martha. “Tell me everything.”

"What happened to  _you_?” asked Rose to John, slightly horror-struck.

The shop owner licked his lips musingly. “Pistachio,” he said by way of explanation, “is really,  _really_  good. God, how did I not know this?”

“ _What happened to you?_ " repeated Rose and Clara in tandem. 

"Your ice cream taste was so boring before - " teased Martha, shoving John’s shoulder, oblivious to Clara’s questions and leading looks. 

"Oi, was  _not_  - “

"What - " began Rose.

" - happened?" cried Clara, nearly screaming.

"Oh," Martha finally murmured, eyes shining. "That."

"Well…" began John, suddenly finding something very interesting in the empty expanse of sky as he trailed off. "We reached an understanding."

"Of sorts," finished Martha. 

“An understanding?” Rose echoed.

"Of sorts?" Clara repeated Martha’s words, equally confused.

"Not very quick on your feet today, are you two?" the med student laughed.

"There were a lot of… distractions this morning," Rose replied lightly, trying not to focus  _too_ much on Clara’s bottom lip.

The brunette hummed an agreement. “You two  _might_  not want to go back in anytime soon,” she warned.

"Jack and Ianto just broke up,  _officially,_ and they work around an unfortunate number of very-breakable dishes,” Rose supplied. 

John winced. “That’s sort of my fault, isn’t it?”

"Totally your fault," Martha concurred. The other two chimed in with nods. John made a face at all of them in general before taking another lick of his ice cream cone, because guilt could  _not_ very well keep him from his mid-morning dessert.

"I could just make us all tea over at my flat," Clara offered. "Not like there’s much to do at the store, anyway."

"Oi!" John cried indignantly, before realizing that, in fact, she was  _right;_ there really wasn’t any work left. 

“I don’t have class or anything,” mused Martha. “We  _could_  go…”

Rose glanced hurriedly at Clara, who seemed to be flip-flopping between her intense liking of Martha and her desire to have Rose alone all to herself to  _make soufflés_. And honestly, Rose preferred the soufflés to tea. “Clara, darling - “

The brunette turned a deep crimson. 

" - I really think John and Martha don’t want  _us_  disturbing  _them…”_ Rose trailed off significantly, implying that she really meant the reverse. 

"It’s no problem!" Martha beamed at Clara, seemingly missing the point completely. 

But John -  _John_  arched an eyebrow and turned to his companion. “We could finish our ice creams and go somewhere else…”

Clara gasped dramatically and pointed between the two of them. “Are you two…um…?”

"No!" laughed Martha at the same time that John shrugged and uttered a characteristic, " _Well_ …”

They turned to each other with matching looks of horror on their faces. 

"Yeah," Rose scoffed, slightly derisively. "An  _understanding_ , huh?”

“Perhaps we really should be going,” Clara said quickly with a little tug on Rose’s arm. The blonde nodded and they took off, waving behind them at John and Martha, who had resorted to shouting in indignation at each other and didn’t notice in the slightest.

"So much passion in  _such_ a little space of time,” Rose lamented, squeezing Clara’s hand. 

"Puppy love, those two," the other woman tutted, laughing. " _Oh._ And ‘darling,’ really?”

Rose grinned. “This was your way to get us  _away_  from them, remember? I had to pitch in if we were ever going to get out.”

"Oh, but I feel so bad for them," Clara sighed. "Having to put up with Jack and Ianto and all."

"We can go back and get them… if you like."

The brunette shook her head vehemently. “This is better.”

 _"So_ much better.”

Clara skipped up the steps to a cheerful brick building, putting her key in the lock and opening the door for Rose. They entered, and, after ascending another flight of stairs, walked into a bright, cheerful, meticulously organized flat. “So,” its owner announced a little nervously. “This is it.”

“Oh my god,” blurted Rose, spinning in a wide circle on her heel, overbalancing dramatically, and tripping onto Clara’s little blue sofa. “Oh my  _god_ ,” she repeated, stunned. 

"Is something wrong?" Clara asked, worried.

"No! It’s just…I haven’t seen a place this  _neat_  before. Maybe like  _ever_.”

"Habit," Clara laughed. "You like it?"

"Hell, yes! I should let you do my room - fuck, it’s the  _worst_  thing - “

"I’m sure it’s lovely," Clara said diplomatically. "Probably very like  _you_.”

"Are you calling me a mess?" Rose accused with a bit of a giggle. 

"No, I’m - I meant - "

"Clara, I’m not serious. I  _know_  I’m a mess.” Rose stretched out on the couch and sighed dramatically. “Now, about those soufflés…”

"You’re  _not_  a mess, and Rose, I’m sorry to break it to you, but the ‘making soufflés’ thing was literal.”

“ _Damn_.”

"What? I like soufflés! The eggs are in the fridge."

Rose stuck her tongue out and forced herself upright. 

"Eating soufflés, however," Clara adds with a grin, "is completely and utterly metaphorical."

“ _That’s_ more like it,” Rose groaned, utterly pleased. 

"But  _after_ we make them, because I really was quite serious about trying out this new recipe.”

Clara smiled and pulled two starched aprons from inside a little closet and, after putting one on herself, reached over to Rose, brushing strands of blonde hair away as she looped the apron around her neck and subsequently tied it around her waist, hands perhaps lingering longer than was  _entirely_ necessary to form a knot.

"Now!" she announced, drawing away from Rose because if she didn’t, they of course wouldn’t get  _any_ baking done, and clapping her hands, “Let’s bake some soufflés, shall we?”

Rose pouted, her unfortunately enticing lower lip sticking out. “Must we?” she moaned.

"If we don’t make soufflés," Clara whispered into her ear, standing on her tiptoes, "there won’t be any soufflés to eat."

That was more than enough to get Rose Tyler to pick up a whisk and spring into action. 

“Oh,” sighed Clara after two minutes of poking around in the refrigerator. “We’re out of milk. And  _apparently_  you can’t make a soufflé without milk.”

"Screw it," muttered Rose vindictively. "Who needs soufflés, anyway?"

"I need soufflés!" retorted Clara. "I’m Soufflé Girl, it’s my… _thing_!” 

"Does it make me a bad girlfriend if I really don’t respect your interests at all in this case?" asked Rose throatily through her eyelashes. 

"Hmm…" Clara pondered, "I think that’s up for debate."

Meanwhile, Martha and John were taking the  _debate_  thing to a horrifically loud level. 

"We’re not going out!" Martha shrieked. "We had ice cream and had a discussion like normal human beings, and you know what? I’d just gotten over you!" 

"How did you get over me? First dates aren’t supposed to do that!"

"Can’t I at least  _pretend_  I don’t like you anymore?” she cried back, rolling her eyes. 

"I licked your ice cream cone!" John grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. "And you  _let_  me! In what world is  _that_ platonic?”

"If I go out with you I’ll never get over you!"

"Who said I wanted that?"

"But  _Rose_  - “

"What about Rose?" John yelled defensively. " _What_?”

Martha lowered her voice, suddenly becoming aware of passers-by on the sidewalk. “You’re obviously still not over her, and no matter what I may…  _feel,_ I’m not going to subject myself to that.”

"I do not," he insisted emphatically, "still have feelings for Rose Tyler."

"John -"

"No." He held up a hand to stop her mid-sentence. "I’m here to win you and only  _you_ over.”

She wanted to argue, because, _of course, he didn’t have to win her over; he had already done that with disturbing skill,_ but relented. “Alright,” she agreed cautiously. “What else did you have in mind, then?”

"Oh, Martha Jones, you’ll never see it coming," he promised, and it certainly wasn’t an empty statement because even  _he_ had no idea what was to follow their ice cream. He offered her his arm, which she gladly accepted, and then took another lick of her ice cream seeing as she had far better taste than he did.

Martha’s brain was currently in ‘abort mission abort abort  _abort_ ' mode, which is why she decided to officially turn her brain off. 

The fact that John was apparently  _trying_  to win her over said more about John’s guilt and loneliness than it did about her.

And damn, talk about guilt-ridden. There was his guilt at the fact that he’d previously regarded Martha herself as an inanimate object in the bookstore (which he absolutely deserved to experience), guilt because of the Ianto thing (which was only half his fault, honestly), and guilt that he really wasn’t over Rose Tyler (which Martha understood perfectly - getting over somebody was  _really_  bloody difficult). 

If Martha had to be fully honest with herself, John needed to sort through this crapload of guilt on his own - but her arms were tight around one of his and their sides were bumping every time they took a step and his coat swished against her ankles and really, how could she refuse that?

Back at the store, however, the ‘Ianto thing’ had achieved new heights of horrific misery for all parties involved, and even more misery for those parties who remained uninvolved. 

Those who actually worked in the store were all-too-aware of the recent break-up; thus, they winced just about every time either Jack or Ianto opened his mouth, because what resulted was either a depressed grumble or an indignant shout. Even Amy and Donna, who had the buffer of a floor between themselves and the former couple, were in actual pain.

The customers filtering in and out of Torchwood, on the other hand, had no idea what was going on other than the fact that two  _supremely_ attractive coffee shop employees were yelling at one another, but they were highly uncomfortable nonetheless, and practically ran down the stairs as soon as they were given the drinks.

"How long do you think this is going to last?" Amy whispered to Donna after a new burst of sobbing - whether from Jack, Ianto, or a frightened customer, they couldn’t tell - came from above.

Donna made a face. “I think I preferred John pining over Rose to whatever  _this_ is.”

Amy frowned. “Where is John, anyway? It’s so weird for him to stay away for so long.”

Her colleague smirked. “Maybe he’s finally coming to his senses and he’s making it up to Martha for being an arsehole to her all these months.”

“He was never  _that_  bad!” Amy defended her friend staunchly. “I mean, he was polite - polite but distant - which is what you’re  _supposed_  to do when somebody likes you and you…don’t.”

Donna resisted the urge to roll her eyes, because life would be so much more peaceful if Amy just followed her own advice. Instead, she countered, “He’s been a jerk; don’t deny it. He’s never even addressed the issue and he keeps turning those  _eyes_ on her without realizing it, but now - “

"You think it’ll  _work_?” cut in Amy, shocked. 

"You’re the one who set them up!" 

"No, but like -  _later_. When he’s not emotionally dying on the inside.”

"I think it could," admitted Donna, "if he plays his cards right."

"Where d’you think they are now?" asked Amy after a few minutes of thought. 

Donna shrugged. “Up a tree? In bed? God - a  _museum_.” She shook with silent laughter. “Definitely a museum. Poor Martha.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, interrupted by a few screams from upstairs, indicating that Gwen had decided that neutrality was overrated and had taken Jack’s side. Loudly. 

“You know, this really is all Rose’s fault,” Amy mused once the shouting had ceased for a moment or two.

Donna contemplated this. “How d’you figure?”

"Well," Amy reckoned, "Ianto and Jack wouldn’t have broken up if Jack hadn’t slept with John; John wouldn’t have slept with Jack if he hadn’t gotten drunk; and he wouldn’t have gotten drunk if Rose had just  _found another place to get coffee._ " 

Her colleague chuckled and raised her own mug. “To Rose Tyler, then, for making our Sunday morning a  _hell_ of a lot more interesting.”

"To Rose Tyler," Amy echoed, grinning. 

A group of petrified-looking customers scurried down the stairs and out the door, clutching their to-go cups in fear. “Have a nice day,” Amy called after them uselessly. 

"If nothing else, Gwen’s going to have to fix this for the sake of her own profit," Donna commented. 

"Profit…" The word sounded foreign in Amy’s mouth. "What would it be like to have one?" 

The women collapsed into laughter.

Upstairs, the fight was actually doing wonders for Gwen’s profit. Customers were apparently so terrified of the barista and the office-boy-thing that they ran away before anyone could give them back their change. 

So she ended up siding with Jack half to keep the argument going, and half because  _someone_  needed to be on Jack’s side. 

Not that she actually thought Jack was in the right though. Not really. 

But  _well_  - Ianto overreacted, that was a given. And Ianto should have  _known_ , because this was  _Jack Harkness_  they were talking about; seriously, the whole John debacle had been a long time in coming. And Ianto was the one currently muttering obscenities under his breath and nearly-but-not-quite dropping everything. At least Jack maintained  _most_  of his composure. 

So yeah, maybe Gwen really was on Jack’s side.

Besides, Ianto had Tosh. For obvious reasons.  _Very_  obvious. As in ‘yeah, I know how it feels when the guy you like blatantly flirts with someone else all the time, even though I’m pretty sure  _mine_  has never actually acted on the flirting thing - I hope’ reasons.

They divided themselves very nicely into their sides in this new war - Jack took the orders, and relayed them to Gwen, who prepared the drinks alongside Tosh (the women, for their part, were perfectly capable of civility), who then handed them to Ianto to deliver to the customers. Owen had his feet propped up on a table to the side, watching with amusement as he munched on scones that he had swiped while Gwen wasn’t looking.

It really was the most  _marvellously_ angst-y of assembly lines - and, in all actuality, it was relatively efficient, aside from Jack shamelessly hitting on anyone he interacted with to spite his ex and Ianto moaning loudly in the faces of any unfortunate couples who found their way in.

It certainly wasn’t the  _worst_ day Torchwood Coffee had ever seen.

Jack eyed a customer walking up to the counter with increased interest - the man was painfully handsome, with carefully chiselled features, a close crop of dark hair, and a rather brooding stare ahead. “What can I get for you?” Jack asked, almost feeling shy for a moment.

 _Almost_.

The man ordered a large black coffee -  _simple,_ Jack mused approvingly.  _I like that_. “Can I get a name for that?” he asked.

"Alonso," the man supplied.

Jack’s first response was something garbled along the lines of ‘Oh my fu - you really  _really_  need to meet a friend of mine - I mean, not a friend - we had sex once, but I think he hates me - hates me  _a lot_ , but oh my fucking god - “

Alonso blinked at him confusedly. 

"Gwen?" called Jack. "John never came back, did he?"

Ianto groaned loudly in response, telling the air, “Honestly, I think  _he’d_  be the first to know if John showed up again,” glaring pointedly  _not_  at Jack.

"No, why?" Gwen responded, more politely than Ianto. 

"His name’s Alonso," said Jack, pointing blatantly at the individual, now minorly freaked. 

"Fuck - fucking hell, no way," exclaimed Owen, dropping his scone and dusting the crumbs off on his jeans to text Martha. 

"My friend’s always had this  _dream_  to meet someone called Alonso,” Jack explained conspiratorially to the newcomer. 

"Oh?" murmured Alonso hesitantly, not sure if he really wanted an explanation. 

"But I’ve always had a dream to meet someone who looked like  _you_ ,” he transitioned, hopefully suavely, as he wrote his phone number on the paper cup. 

Alonso took in the numbers and then looked back up at the barista, a grin spreading across his face.

"Right," he agreed, eyes flickering down to read the other man’s name tag. "I’ll call you…  _Jack.”_

He turned and disappeared down the stairs, Jack letting out a triumphant whoop once he was out of hearing range, and either ignoring or simply disregarding Ianto’s surly gaze.

"John’s going to be furious," Gwen warned.

"Let him," Jack dismissed her breezily.

Tosh shot him a warning look. “We  _finally_ find an Alonso for him, and you have to…” She waved her hand in lieu of expressing her anger with words.

"He just wants to fucking say  _let’s go_  in French to someone once in his life; I don’t know what the big deal is.”

The women just shook their heads at him as he smirked into the cash register. “Alonso.” He repeated the name slowly. “Sort of rolls off my tongue, doesn’t it?” He considered this. “…Like something else will if he  _does_  end up calling me. I am on a  _roll!”_

Ianto laughed derisively. “Wow. Just,  _wow_ … did none of you notice that you didn’t even give him coffee?”

"What - " muttered Jack. "The hell are you talking about?"

"He took the empty cup with your number and  _didn’t pay_. We should’ve charged him for the cup, honestly. Cups’ll be ten pounds now. ‘Specially for him.  _Goddamn_  - “

"He might come back!" Tosh burst in perkily. "We owe it to John…"

“ _He might come back_ ,” Ianto repeated with utter dejection, and hoped against hope that this Alonso character had something better to do than actually drink coffee. Maybe he had a thing for invisible coffee! Maybe he wasn’t  _really_  that into Jack and ended up throwing the cup away.  _Maybe.._.

Oh god. Ianto was never the jealous type before today, but he was pretty sure he was going to literally be sick in about three seconds. 

Owen took one look at his green expression and tossed the paper bag that previously housed his scones at Ianto’s head; the office boy threw it downstairs viciously and scowled.

Meanwhile, halfway across town, Martha was scrolling through a long line of passive-aggressive text messages from her parents, when she found one from Owen and dropped her phone. “John? You’re never going to believe this.”

John glanced up from his very-nearly-gone ice cream cone in surprise. “What is it?”

"Something just happened in the coffee shop," she started carefully once she had her phone secured in her pocket again, not wanting to excite him  _too_ much.

"The coffee shop," he repeated in a grumble.

Martha smirked a little - if she were John, she wouldn’t be particularly endeared to Torchwood or its workers either. “They got a customer today… named Alonso.”

His eyes widened to a point that might have not been completely healthy. “Alonso?” he repeated incredulously.

"But John, Owen says he’s gone -"

It was too late, though; John had already grabbed Martha’s hand, and he was leading her down a busy London street in a dash before she quite knew what was happening. “We might still catch him!” he called behind him to his confused date.

A few minutes later, Torchwood was experiencing a lull in its weekend-morning traffic - a good thing, because Jack was far too pleased with himself to take orders that were anywhere near correct.

"At least you’re remembering to give them  _some_ kind of drink,” Gwen smirked.

"Not my fault," he replied in an airy voice that somehow had surprisingly cutting undertones. "Thought Ianto was going to poison Alonso’s coffee if I let him anywhere  _near_ it.”

“Nah,” responded Ianto lightly, “if I have a problem with one person in particular,  _I_  don’t drag other people into it and make their lives hell.” His voice grew sharper and more sarcastic as his sentence dragged on. He turned to Tosh and finished with, “I could be doing the flirting thing, but I  _chose_  not to, because  _the people I would be flirting with deserve better_  - “

"Get to the point, Ianto," Jack groaned. "You want to deal with this, just you and me?"

"No!" cried Owen. "You  _tried_  that! You ended up snogging against that wall and got even more pissed at each other; I was there - ” He was conveniently ignored. 

"Yeah, I’d like that," said Ianto oddly calmly. "So go on, attack me to my face."

"Don’t you  _dare_  - ” began Owen again, when he heard the door slam and saw John pull Martha into the shop downstairs in a strange mix of both glee and agony. “Never mind; I’ll deal with them, you kids have fun.”

"Alonso?" asked John tersely to Owen, who was coming down the stairs towards them. 

"I  _told_  him he was  _gone_  - ” cut in Martha. 

"I didn’t tell you though…he has Jack’s number. He’s going to call back. Nobody  _doesn’t_  call Harkness back. It’s against some kind of natural law.”

"What?" John nearly screamed, because apparently the thought of Jack corrupting his Alonso (yes,  _his_  Alonso, though he’d never seen him before) was too much for him to take. 

"Also," said Owen breathlessly, "Ianto and he are going to go at it in about three seconds so you two should get out."

"I don’t mind watching the show," John mused gleefully. "I could make some more popcorn!"

“ _No_ ,” warned Owen. “John, Martha -  _out_.”

"But Rory’s still here; we have some more studying - "

"Out," he repeated. "Look, John, she needs some fun in her life so don’t you dare bring her back here, but don’t have  _too_ much fun and  _use protection._ ”

He slammed the door in their faces and waved grimly at them through the glass; Amy and Donna had watched the whole scene with interest and burst into giggles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Alonso thing was doctorwhat's idea - she threw it in on a whim and I fell off my chair when I read her installment and it took me ten minutes to calm down enough to add to it. :P
> 
> So yep, things are getting really messy, really fast. 
> 
> If there are any ships you want us to throw together or focus more on, let me know - or any plot developments in general that sound interesting! (Shh I'm a closet John/Martha shipper and I can't stop myself~)
> 
> Comments make our days brighter, and feel free to visit either of us on tumblr, me at dawidtennant and the fantastic coauthor at doctorwhat!


	9. Don Quixote

Donna clucked a little once the laughter had subsided. “Really though,  _John and Martha_.” She enunciated the names as if they were thoroughly unfamiliar. “I’m surprised that’s actually…”

"Happening?" finished Amy, earning a snort from the other redhead. "I’m not sure if he knows what he’s gotten himself  _into_. She’s been interested in him for  _ages,_ and he’s never seen it - completely oblivious to romance, that one - “

Donna grimaced before making a decision, that, frankly,  _someone_ was really going to have to make sooner or later. “Amy, there’s really something I think you should know - “

Her confession was cut short by a medical textbook, which she only managed to avoid by ducking, flying through the air towards the two of them.

(Over in the corner, Rory was  _very_  distinctly smirking into a different book he had just hastily pulled from his pile and opened up.)

"Arse," Donna muttered under her breath, though she had to appreciate his style. 

Upstairs, with Gwen, Tosh, and a recently-returned Owen stashed away carefully in a back room and customer traffic for the most part subsided, Jack and Ianto finally had Torchwood to themselves.

Jack was using this opportunity to doodle Alonso’s name on the chalkboard where Gwen normally listed seasonal drinks in fancy script. He noticed Ianto eyeing him distastefully and added three extra loops on the O. 

"You don’t even know his last name," Ianto muttered. "Maybe he’s not even called Alonso at all. Maybe he’s lying!"

"Fuck it; he was  _hot_ ,” reasoned Jack. “Not that he’d have any reason to lie…”

"Maybe he was a figment of your imagination!"

"I wish  _you_  were a figment of my imagination!”

Ianto stuck his tongue out as an even more childish response to Jack’s childish reply, while pulling a biscotti from behind the display case and biting it viciously in half. 

"Jealous, huh?" Jack needled.

"In your dreams, Harkness."

"I can find you an Alonso all for yourself, you know - well, a  _someone_. I have like fifty exes I could hook you up with - “

Ianto cut him off by shrieking, “Out of line!  _That_  was out of line!”

(Amy saw the ceiling visibly shake and ran upstairs.)

”You are grown men,” she hissed to them. “And grown men settle their conflicts by  _passive-aggressively sulking in opposite corners_ while Jack flirts with everyone in existence and Ianto sobs on and off for hours on end, not  _this_.”

She paused to consider her own reasoning - it was solid. Possibly. In some universe. 

"Do you hear him?" Ianto countered indignantly. "He - "

"I  _know,_ " Amy sighed. "And if you two are going to work together, you can’t just - "

"Just what?" Jack asked innocently. "Offer to cure Ianto’s loneliness?"

The other man let out an angry grunt and looked about ready to lunge at Jack; thankfully, Rory sprinted up the stairs and held him back. “This really isn’t a good idea,” he muttered to Amy.

"I’ve got it!" she protested. "I don’t need the two of  _them_ putting a damper on my weekend.”

Jack regarded the two of them dubiously. “What position are  _you_ in to give romantic advice, anyway, Amy?”

"Why does everyone talk about me like I have no romantic sense?"

”Amy,” groaned Jack, “I met you when I ordered John a kissogram for his birthday two years ago - he wouldn’t even kiss you, and since then, you haven’t had  _anyone_.”

"There’s no shame in that!" said Amy indignantly with her nose in the air.

"I didn’t  _say_  that - “

"Maybe I don’t  _want_  anyone - “

"And that’s  _perfectly_  fine,” Jack placated her, “but you also have no fucking right to tell me what I can and can’t do.” His shift in tone was jarring.

"I might not be  _with_  anyone, but that doesn’t make me blind!” she shouted. (Ianto rolled his eyes.) “It’s perfectly obvious that you two are only so mad because you want each other.  _Desperately_.” 

Jack leaned against a wall and scoffed.

"Don’t laugh; you want to make him jealous."

"Do  _not_  - “

"And Ianto, you’re just being sulky and moaning and not flirting with anyone because you think you’ll never date anyone again - "

"I could date  _you_ , Amy,” he blurted spontaneously before looking like he wanted to sink into the floor.

Rory gripped the edges of his sleeves so that he might have  _some_ degree of control over his fists. 

Amy stared at Ianto. “ _Me_? But - I - ” She stopped when she realized that  _she had absolutely no idea what the hell she was trying to say._

"R-right," Ianto stammered back, working to memorize the exact details of his shoes in an attempt to stare  _anywhere_ but Amy Pond’s face.

Jack groaned. “Do either of you have any idea how to flirt?”

"Shut up, Jack!" they insisted in unison. He backed away, hands up in mock surrender.

(Rory, for one, was in the small minority who was more in favor of  _Ianto_ shutting up, but he decided not to voice that opinion.)

"Maybe you should get back downstairs," Jack suggested to Amy. "I’m sure Donna misses the company."

 _Donna misses the company?_ Rory wanted to go drown himself in Torchwood’s abundance of coffee. 

Jack broke the ensuing awkward silence with a sudden, “Anyways, seriously, I’m pretty sure I taught you how to flirt better than  _that_ , Ianto.” Apparently  _that_  still rankled. 

Ianto spluttered in response and Amy took the opportunity to escape and run down the steps three at a time.

"Oh wait, that’s right," cut in Jack again, "you didn’t  _need_  to flirt. I took you on as a goddamn  _pity case_.”

Amy stopped halfway in the middle of the staircase and turned back up again. “Jack?  _Jack!_  No.”

"No, it’s fine," Ianto laughed bitterly. "Do you know how many times I’ve seen him get shot down? He thinks  _nobody_  can resist  _him_ , but seriously - “

"That’s because nobody  _can_  resist me!”

 ”Fucking Alonso!” shrieked Ianto.  _(God, oh god, what did Alonso have that he didn’t?)_

"That’s right, I will be!"  _(But it should have been Ianto; it was always Ianto.)_

"Amy, have you seen Gwen?" Ianto purposefully turned away from Jack and spoke exaggeratedly loudly. "I think…I think I might resign. ‘S not worth it."

Behind him, the cocky look was wiped clean off Jack’s face. “Resign?” he repeated stupidly. 

"Yeah." Ianto nodded, as if to reassure himself of his own plan. "This was only s’posed to be a temporary job, after all - not like I was going to be an office boy at a coffee shop forever." He laughed a little bitterly. "Can you do Gwen a favor and tell her when you see her?" he asked Amy.

"Me?!" she squeaked. "Shouldn’t it have to be Jack?" 

"No way," Jack, over his momentary shock, put his hands up in the air. "I’m not going to be responsible for that."

"But you  _are_ responsible,” the Scot pointed out. “Wait, isn’t Gwen just in the back room, anyhow? Why don’t  _you_ go talk to her, Ianto?”

Jack crossed his arms over his chest, his lips quirking back up into a smirk.

"Because - " Ianto started in a stammer, " _because I told you to!_ " He bolted out of the building, unfortunately not for the first time that day. 

”I’m not going after him!” yelled Jack to Amy with a dramatic roll of his eyes.

"I wasn’t going to ask you to!"

"Oh," he muttered, not looking mollified in the least. "Yeah, and I’m not telling Gwen either! She’ll blame  _me_ , even though it’s because Ianto Jones is a whiny asshole of epic proportions - “

"Jack, calm down, I’ll go after him myself."

"What? No!" 

Amy heaved a frustratedly throaty sigh. “What’s your problem?”

"Nobody’s going after him, Pond!  _No-bod-y_ ,” he enunciated with threatening fervor. “He is going to fall into an open sewer and hopefully stay there until - “

"Jack!" Amy warned with a horrified air. 

"No, I mean it!"

"You…you  _never_  deserved him.”

"Is that right? Why don’t you take him off my hands then! God knows I don’t want him!"

"Maybe I will!" cried Amy, angrily storming down the stairs. "And maybe then you’ll feel sorry when you hear us having  _really_  good sex in the storage room!”

Rory slid off his chair onto the floor to look at Jack with dismay. “Kiss and make up with him, please. For my sake?”

Jack had to swallow the bile rising in his throat before he could even consider the med student all but kneeling in front of him.

"Ianto can do whatever he wants," he said calmly once he was sure he wouldn’t throw up at the very thought. " _Whoever_ he wants.” Jack smirked a little, feeling more like himself. “Even Amy.”

"It’s whomever," Rory muttered disconcertedly. 

The barista shook his head. “And you wonder why Amy won’t go for you.”

"I’m sure Ianto has  _terrible_ grammar.” Rory rolled his eyes before realizing that  _it was the most ridiculous thing to get jealous over ever._ "I’ve - I’ve got to go study." He plodded down the stairs, hands shoved in his pockets.

"You can come out now," Jack called to the employees in the back. 

"Thank  _God!”_ Owen, Tosh, and Gwen all chorused as they fell out of the storage closet on top of one another.

”So, anything happen?” asked Owen brightly. “I know I’m technically a doctor and all, but I’m not above hiding a body if you pay me.”

"He  _resigned_ , if that counts,” Jack airily responded. “I apparently was supposed to tell you, Gwen. So I guess we’re back down to four of us.”

Tosh’s eyes widened. 

"Good riddance, right?" Jack directed this last to her, not quailing at her glare. 

"Jack!" Gwen shrieked. "He did  _what_?”

"Resigned," Jack repeated. "We’re over and done with Ianto fucking Jones."

"You’re not upset by this _at all_?” Tosh prodded gently, worry replacing her previous anger by degrees.

"Nope - I mean, I’ve got that Alonso bloke and all…"

"But where did he  _go_?” groaned Gwen. 

"Out?" shrugged Jack. "Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit."

"Someone should find him," sighed Tosh. "I don’t think  _he_  can deal with this any better than you can.”

"Hey - "

"Your coping mechanisms are fucked, Jack," agreed Owen. "Someone should look for him." 

Jack glanced between Tosh and Owen abruptly. “Fine, you two - rock, paper, scissors - best of three. Whoever loses and is stuck going on ‘find Ianto’ duty should tell him never to come back here.  _Ever_.”

” _Christ,”_ Gwen grumbled with a roll of her eyes. For his endless stream of innuendo, Jack Harkness was a fucking child, plain and simple. “ _No one_ is going after Ianto, because I’m already one worker down on a weekend morning and I don’t need any more staffing changes.”

"Gwen - " Tosh protested.

"I know," she sighed. "And we’ll get Ianto back, just  _not right this very minute.”_

Jack opened his mouth in indignation. “We don’t need him back!” 

Gwen shoved a rag in his chest. “You’re on cleaning duty for the rest of the day.” She turned, and he made a face behind her back.

Back downstairs, a particularly flushed Rose and Clara stumbled into the bookstore’s doors. “What did we miss?” the blonde asked, a smile seemingly stuck on her face.

"Another chapter in the never-ending saga of Jack and Ianto," Amy informed them, trying to suppress the urge to smirk at Clara’s very prominent hickey.

"What happened this time?" the teacher asked as she sunk into an armchair. 

Donna sighed. “Jack broke up with Ianto, then Ianto ran away for the  _first_ time - “

"Yeah, we saw him," Rose cut in.

"First time?" Clara asked at the same moment. 

"He went back up, but Harkness was busy picking up some bloke named Alonso," Donna continued. 

"In front of Ianto?" Clara grimaced. 

Amy nodded. “Then the two of them fought: Jack was insensitive, Ianto was moody - Ianto ran away again, and here we are.”

Clara opened her mouth, probably to scoff derisively about how she and Rose actually had the least fucked-up love life of anybody in the shop, when Rory looked up suddenly from the corner at the sound of Amy’s voice.

“You’re still here?”

“Yeah, this whole time, actually. But why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought…thought you were going after Ianto…” Rory fumbled.

“Nah, just messing with Jack, really,” shrugged Amy with a casual flip of her hair that caused Rory to muffle a gasp of adoration and pale visibly.

“So the thing about ‘really good sex’ with him in the storage closet was bullshit?” he asked after he regained his composure.

Rose jerked her head up at that. “Amy? What the  _hell_  did I miss, like seriously - “

“I  _guess_  it was bullshit?” sighed Amy to Rory, cutting the blonde off. “I mean, I don’t  _know_  – “

“Follow your heart; ignore Jack,” blurted Rory suddenly.

“Follow your heart?” mouthed Donna back at him with a snort and a silent scream of laughter.

And Rory wasn’t sure what happened after that except Amy kissed him on the cheek (oh  _god_ ) and murmured something garbled in his ear and ran out the door.

Rory came to his senses again at the sharp bang of the slammed door; he pressed his hand to his cheek in dazed dismay as Donna burst into a very  _loud_  scream of laughter this time.

“Shut up! Oh god,  _oh god_  – I don’t think this could possibly get any worse – what was I  _thinking_  – what even did I  _say_  – “ panicked Rory.

Just then Owen careened down the stairs and turned, knocking his hip painfully into a bookshelf. “Fucking hell, that hurt…Rory! Screw Amy - things just got like a  _million_  times worse.” He tossed the med student his phone; Rory read the text on the screen and groaned.

“Yeah, exactly,” Owen sighed. “I mean,  _she_  doesn’t seem to think this is  _worse_ , but…”

“We’re going after them,” Rory declared resolutely.

“Tosh?” called Owen up the stairs. “Do you have any weapons of mass destruction lying around?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our John/Martha hearts kinda got the best of us. Oops. :P
> 
> I guess this ended up as kind of a filler chapter? Because Janto's still struggling a lot and basically everyone's struggling a lot and oh dear. 
> 
> We'll get to some more ship exploring and new-ground-breaking in the next chapter, we think! So give us requests for characters, ships, and plots you'd like to see! (Personally, I'm a Tosh/Owen fangirl to the /death/; is anyone with me?)
> 
> And by all means visit us at doctorwhat and dawidtennant (now patrachilles) on tumblr~


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